Google Bowling

I just read the most shocking article. Michael Pedone wrote an article about Google Bowling. Now, I haven't investigated it yet but apparently it's based on Google penalizing for paid text links.

Apparently he claims that with that penality, competing companies go out and buy links for their competitors. The competitor's site disappears from the SERPs. It's completely bizarre.

I read a back issue of High Rankings Advisor and found interesting information about Google's sandbox and the aging delay. (Also found an article on changing your URL name which I actually need for a client right now).

Suffice it to say, the sandbox has a lot of different criteria. Based on what I've read, things like traffic reports based on the google toolbar and url tracking from the SERPs are being used to track the traffic to your website.

There's lots more regarding links and anchor text, including the length of time it takes for links to show up, and if fit the profile for being artificial or natural. If you're not attempting to artificially inflate your link popularity, then you should be alright.

In one post someone talked about the sandbox:

Sandbox: Sites that buy lots and lots of links or use link networks or any other linking schemes seem to be affected by a longer term "sandbox" effect where the links seem to be discounted and don't propel the site to the top of the SERP's as we have seen happen in the past.

The quality of the links are probably the main issue, although one of the other posters mentioned:

No link can have a negative effect on your PR, that is a fact. The ONLY way a link can have a negative effect is if YOU are linking to a penalised site, so forget about that aspect of it.

OK back to reality. Despite what people say, who links to you does have a massive effect on where you sit in the grand scheme of things web wise. We all know that inbound links count to help you, but they CAN count to help knock you down as well.

The key think with inbound links is quality, plain and simple. If ALL you have is crap inbounds, then by logic, you site is crap. HOWEVER, if you have quality inbounds, then by default, your site must be quality.

You have identified the problem, now focus on building some quality back-links.

So now that I'm somewhat confused, I guess the best advice is to keep targeting the quality links and not worry about the paid for links, no matter how scarey they are. Just Do Not Link To Crap.