Whitey - 1:25 pm on Mar 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

It's a nice idea for webmasters to come to WMT and discount links that appear to be paid for. But it wouldn't be equitable.

There's plenty of websites that wouldn't do that and Google probably won't penalise or discount many of those anyway.

I think Google is just buying time. Links are going to be a lot less of a factor as search continues to develop , with user data combined with content playing a far greater role. At the maturity of that development, perceived manipulation with the use of paid linking will be a relatively lesser consideration to police in many cases.