Yesterday we covered a statement where Google said you should not even ask for links. It was from the Portuguese Webmaster blog written by Diogo Botelho from the Google webmaster team. It said then "do not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links."
I emailed Google about it over 24-hours before I published my stories about it, to make sure they were communicating the proper message and they didn't respond. That was until several hours after I published my stories on it and the SEO community kinda of blew up about it.
Now they are retracting that statement somewhat. They emailed me that they've since updated the blog post to change that line to read "not buy, sell or ask for links that may violate our linking webmaster guidelines."
It makes you think, does the changed language change much?
On the one hand, we have Google seeing the community reaction and deciding to actually change the statement. That is a clear sign that asking for links, is NOT against Google's guidelines. There is no other way to take the message of them changing the line of text. If it was against their guidelines, they would not have changed anything.
On the other hand, what changed? Their guidelines say unnatural links can be penalized. Are links you ask for natural? That is up for interpretation.
But the clear message Google made by changing this statement was that asking for links is NOT ALWAYS considered against their guidelines, but only when it violates their guidelines.
Got it? Thought so.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
