Link Seller Linking To You? Google Says You Won’t Benefit From It.

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a 90-second video on what happens if a site that is selling links also links to your site. In short, Matt Cutts explains that when sites that sell links (with Google knowing about it) link to you, Google won’t pass value from that link seller website. So, […]

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Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a 90-second video on what happens if a site that is selling links also links to your site.

In short, Matt Cutts explains that when sites that sell links (with Google knowing about it) link to you, Google won’t pass value from that link seller website. So, if a site that sells links is linking to you, it most likely won’t hurt you. Matt said that the link will not benefit you and most likely will not hurt you.

Matt explained:

(1) Websites that sell links will see their toolbar PageRank downgraded by 30, 40 or 50%.

(2) The site will no longer continue to be able to pass PageRank.

(3) Sites they link to will no longer benefit from those links.

Does that mean buying links from link sellers won’t result in a penalty? Not necessarily.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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