robdwoods - 6:27 pm on Mar 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

I can go look up any site that is in the top 10 and see that all of them are buying links, I cant prove it, but sites typically dont jsut radomly put a link for keyword on there footer, or sidebar. This is all I am saying

I would tend to agree. Some of my competition buys links and not even in a very careful way. You have to be pretty obvious about it or be buying them from sites already flagged as selling them to get caught, but you CAN get caught. They currently aren't getting caught and the link buying is working but that doesn't mean they won't get caught. I would never buy links to a domain that you can't afford to throw away and start fresh or where your business can't stand a lengthy absence from the SERPs. Having said that, based on the very very obvious patterns in my competition's links and anchor text (98% of their incoming links from the same two non-brand related keywords)I'd say that Google isn't nearly as good at detecting paid links as they say they are and you have to do it egregiously to get their attention....or have someone "out" you, and even then I'm not sure Google pays much attention to those spam reports.