Google AdSense site praising site selling text links

Height of hypocrisy

[softwareengineer99]

Today I saw a posting on AdSense Blog praising a weblogs firm (recently bought by AOL) when in fact that firm is selling text links for the purpose of PageRank manipulation. See wireless.weblogsinc.com .

You will see that on a majority of WebLogsInc blogs there is an Advertisement that says "Get your own text link here."

Why is Google praising a company that is actively selling textlinks without using a rel="nofollow" ?

I know of many sites that have been penalized for selling text links. Why is then this company being praised on Google AdSense blogs? Shouldn't they be penalized like everyone else?

Does Google treat a publisher making $3K a day differently than all other publishers? If so, Why?

[Jalinder]

What's wrong in selling text links? Even Yahoo does it.

[softwareengineer99]

What's wrong in selling text links? Even Yahoo does it.

Yahoo uses rel=nofollow. Without the rel="nofollow" the textlinks being sold help in PageRank manipulation.
Google penalizes many sites for selling text links. Why praise this one?

[Jalinder]

Well I did not notice rel=nofollow in Yahoo directory, and I am sure if they start using rel=nofollow few would buy link in Yahoo directory if any.

[sonny]

where do they mention pagerank?
if they had said: "advertise here" instead, would that have been ok?

[Jalinder]

weblogsinc network is worth a praise.

[softwareengineer99]

where do they mention pagerank?
if they had said: "advertise here" instead, would that have been ok?

You don't need to mention PageRank. If a link is direct (see source code) it's safe to assume it will help in PageRank manipulation.

"Advertise here" would have meant "Advertise here"

"Buy a text link here" has very specific implications for anyone who can read between the lines.

Most advertisements are delivered through JS. A paid-for, direct text link these days is only for Page Rank manipulation.

[Jalinder]

A paid-for, direct text link these days is only for Page Rank manipulation.
>> May be for some people. Site selling those links may not mean that. And all such sites do not have to keep changing their codes for search engines.

[softwareengineer99]

Jalinder, Whatever!

[Jalinder]

So your suggestion is that all paid links should go rel=nofollow or javascript? And change for whom, search engines? Remember Yahoo, a search engine itself, has direct links in its directory, some of them being paid for.
Even if Yahoo does rel=nofollow or javascript rest of the world will nofollow.