Does Google penalize in-content links?

[glenv]

Having been penalized quite a while back for using paid text links I am a bit gun-shy when it comes to buying any type of paid linking scheme. However, I am being told by a seller of text links whereby the keyword is hyper linked and part of the content that there is no problem since "This makes them look a lot more natural to the search engines. The traditional text link ads are ads that appear on the sidebar, header, or footer."

Please let me know your experience on this matter.

Glen

[wmhelp]

TextLink ads that popup a preview when mouse is over are a big turn off for me. They can be useful sometimes. Whether google penalizes such links or not, visitors to your site most likely will by simply leaving.

The TextLink Ads I am talking about are the ones with double underscores. They are found even on many large websites. On an obnoxiousness scale, they are somewhere between popup ads and regular text ads.

If your ads aren't like above, people still might not click if they all go to same website.

[cnvi]

Glenv, sorry this is slightly off topic but how do you know you were penalized? were you removed from the index or did they tell you that you were penalized? or did your rankings just drop? how many links did you buy and over how long of a period?

[glenv]

I went from a PR5 to no indexing at all. I corrected the problem 5 months ago and have asked to be re-indexed but Google has not replied nor have they responded by re-indexing me.

I used a popular text link company and had them in my sidebar.

[Philosopher]

Yep...that can do it. :)

The in content links are probably the best types of links currently. They look completely natural and it would be/is hard has hell to tell a natural one from a paid one if done right.

After all, most "natural" linking is done just like that..from within a paragraph of text.

Sidebar, footer, etc. type links are super easy to spot these days.

[nealrodriguez]

just try to ensure that that company doesn't list any of the sites it uses for these links anywhere on the web, or that somebody else may be posting a list of these sites somewhere to ring the googlephone @ the googlecave. google is also openly accepting complaints from competitors who know about any site paying for links; if they found out, they could snitch, and you'll get thrown out again.