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Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that even big sites that do paid links, buying or selling of links to pass PageRank or manipulate the Google search results, can be penalized and it is against Google's webmaster guidelines.
The accusations came up a couple of months ago that Wix, the popular free CMS platform, was informing their customers to link to Wix with specific anchor text. In which John Mueller said size of a site doesn't matter, Google can penalize any site, even penalize themselves for paid links.
Here is the accusation:
If the link is on your site, you can decide how to make it, whether to nofollow it, or even if you want to keep it. Make your site awesome the way you want it.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) December 28, 2017
Here is the response:
There's no difference by size of site. But if you're selling links that pass pr that seems like a bad idea for both sides & would be against our guidelines.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) December 28, 2017
Of course, Wix didn't chime in to any of these allegations.
The truth is, Google's thing now is that buying links is throwing money out of the window and they devalue those links vs demote those links.
Honestly, I am a bit tired of covering paid link stories but whatever. :)
Forum discussion at Twitter.
