Isn’t it fun when people don’t practice what they preach? Google offers a link to anyone who spends at least $1,995.00. Most have seen this page before, but I read it over on Sphinn the other day and had to bring it up again.
Basically, Google will give anyone who spends a minimum of $1,995.00 per year for one of their Google Mini’s, a free customer testimonial and a link back to their site. Oddly enough, they aren’t playing fair in their rel=nofollow game they’ve been pushing on everyone else. Maybe we should start selling text links on Google for $2k per month and use the Google Mini for our own needs. I would imagine most companies would happily pay 2k per year for a solid link on Google. That’s only $166.67 per month or $38.46 per week or $5.48 per day! That’s EASY money. And for those taking notes, their links DO pass PageRank and they do appear as valid backlinks for the sites they link to. Shame, shame spammers.
**UPDATE**
I couldn’t remember where I originally read this, but as I’m making the topic public again, others are riding my wave and pointed out where it was brought up originally.
26 comments ↓
A link to the page that actually states what you’re talking about would be nice.
Vic
Interesting. I’ve always wondered what those are like. I run Google Desktop on my computer at home. It was simply amazing at finding things but until my index was 350,000 documents strong, it lacked relevancy. Perhaps if I want a backlink in the future I’ll consider these. Although the 2K price tag is a little scary and I’m sure it wouldn’t help my relevancy.
Google seems to get more and more evil everyday.
Stumbled and will be linking to it later. Unbelievable.
[...] Hypocrisy), please pop over to the Linkworth blog where they will show you where you can buy a solid PR 7 backlink from GOOGLE for $1,995 per [...]
Well, do as I say not as I do eh? Smacks of hypocrisy.
Ha, ha, nice find! I’m wondering what their PR (Public Relations, not the other one!) would have to say about this!
hmmmm…..where’s the rel=”nofollow”?
Vic, I provided a link. Are you looking for an actual form that says “buy link here” ? It’s worded differently. If you buy a Google Mini from them, then you get to post your testimonial on that page which includes a solid PR 7 link pointing to your site without their forced tag “rel=nofollow”.
Rob, but if you break it down into a monthly cost, it’s actually an awesome price. $2k sounds scary because it’s a lump sum.
Hey Tim… thanks for the mention! I visited your site and it was full of errors. Just in case you haven’t caught it yet.
whats funny is I think MCutts “IS” their public relations.
I’d wonder if those links pass page rank, even though the nofollow tag is absent. Hard to run a controlled test.
Scott, I checked quite a few of the links on that page and most had really high pagerank and the link from google appeared in their backlink list. It’s pretty obvious it’s passing juice.
One other thing to add, isn’t the old saying, “Lead by example” ?
That is twisted and funny but not surprising that they are internally doing just what they are penalizing competitors for.
The Class Action potential increases . . .
WICKO - hmm, I always thought those checks could mislead. Google can decide not to pass pagerank “by hand” without it affecting public-view backlinks and toolbar PR. You may be right, but I stil wonder.
Tough to say Scott. I’ve looked at a LOT of sites backlinks and I’m quite familiar with the patterns. Usually we’re checking to see if someone is hijacking PR, but we also check to see if links are working or not. Usually if a link is not passing anything, it will not appear in the Google link: list. Usually if it appears there, then it’s a really strong site and is passing juice.
This is a topic others have brought up before and I don’t think G00G has ever given any response to it. No response usually means guilty.
looks like the spamming police are acting like spammers now
Is it right that google selling links?
Hell, that’s cheaper advertising than what I currently spend and with an evil box to boot. Can’t lose.
Since PR has been devalued so much and PayPer blogging advertising companies are switching to other forms of measurement could it be that Google will dump PR all together in the next couple of years?
Yeah it’s not a bad price at all.
I doubt they’ll dump PR internally. It’s used to determine rankings. I could definitely see them removing visual PR, but it seems they would have done that a long time ago if they want to knock people from using it.
LOL time to order a new toy…
[...] couple of weeks ago, I blogged about Google selling links for a cheap annual price of $1,995. It was a story that I read some time ago but could not find the [...]
Thanks for the hat-tip guys!
They made it, they can sell it.
Looks like they`ve had an increase - now $2,990.00.
“*Update: Starting on January 7, 2008 all Google Minis sold include 2 years of technical support and hardware warranty coverage. You can continue using your Google Mini beyond the 2 year support period through a perpetual license.”
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