Frank Watson wrote that RipOff Report Now Selling Links, Verifying Safe Cash4Gold. In short, he shows how they are selling links for certain "qualified" and "verified" businesses.
What is the big deal if a site sell links? Well, it is not - it is up to the site if they want to take the risk of selling links and being penalized by Google for doing so. So what is the big deal here?
Well, Ripoff Report is a site that can often be an online reputation management nightmare. Ripoff Report tends to rank very well for business names that have complaints about them. Pushing down results in Google from Ripoff Report is often not the easiest task to complete. Which is why SEOs might like to call out issues with the site, especially webmaster guidelines issues.
Just read this Sphinn comment:
Its hard to understand how Google can justify the authority it betows on this site. They break all the rules and continue to thrive hurting many innocent victims of their so called consumer advocacy site.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
