Some time has passed since Google made quite a splash in the SEO-scene with the PageRank depreciations of a few apparent linksellers and the waves have calmed. There has been a second round in which those who kept on selling links lost the puny rest of their leftover-PageRank and where writers of paid blogpostings have been busted again – Google's statement is clear: The sale and purchase of textlinks will not be tolerated anymore in the future. In a move fitting this, Google has extended its Webmaster-Guidelines insofar that now, the sale as well as the purchase of links (and this is the new part) are not desired if a site wishes to feel at home in the Googleindex. Its interesting which consequences have been drawn from this development and which ones will presumably follow in the time to come.

On the side of linksellers there are two camps: The one, considerably larger camp – to which most of the affected publishing houses belong, with strong and therefore interesting sites – have removed the links head over heels and often in breach of contract with those buying the links. They have then used their contacts with Google to get their old PageRank back as quickly as possible. The other camp is either not dependent as much on Google traffic that they see a need to react or they are withdrawing into an act of defiance (“Google-boycott”). All in all and with the upcoming “PageRank-depreciation-rounds” the market will be deprived of quite a few – mostly high-valued – links.

The whole affair is a lot more relaxed for those purchasing links – at least at the moment. Save for a few linkspurchasers, like ShopZilla, which is even paying webmasters money to remove their paid-for links again, most are conscious of the dangers but usually do not have many alternatives. If the change in the Webmaster-guidelines is any clue to the linkbuyers that they can count on their sites being reevaluated in the future, we should see quite some changes here, too.

Is the “age of linktrading” for the manipulation of searchengine-rankings consequently coming to an end? Links will stay one of the main ranking-factors for Internet-searchengines in the future. The WorldwideWeb is based too strongly on these links as that you could keep them out of any assessment of relevance. This will always open the door to possibilities of gaining an advantage there and to those attempting to use this for their own gain. Google's public meddling in this, however, makes this process definitely more complex: footer- and sidebar-links, which are traded through larger networks at the moment and which are certainly making an impact, will surely not be valued anymore and this will also be the end to other simple integrations. By raising the requirements for functioning linkpurchase considerably, a whole lot of “amateurs” and “hobby-SEOs” will not be able to keep up and Google would have reached its goal: The purchase and sale of links would be returned to a state in which their influence on the SERPs would be manageable.