Google Hunt - (gōō’gəl huhnt) noun. An attempt by Google to find and record all sites that buy and sell links with the intention of increasing search engine rankings. It is likely that Google will then apply some kind of filter with the intent to diminish the search engine rankings of such sites.

John Chow, ProBlogger, Steve Pavlina, and other A-listers beware! Google may be trying to hunt you down!

I have a tremendous amount of respect for all of these guys, and would hate to see anything happen to any of them. This post is my warning to them all!

Admired A-Listers - It is very likely that the sponsered links on your sites are against Google’s quality guidelines. Not a single one of the sponsored links found on the above sites has a ‘no follow’ tag.

Google’s call to find webmasters who are buying and selling links could become to huge problem for some major players. As seen in a recent blog post from Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, Google is trying to narrow down sites that are buying or selling links without including the ‘no follow’ tag.

It seems to me that the punishment for selling links would be much harsher than for buying them, which is why I’m calling out to my admired A-listers.

Google already has a way to discount ‘in-bound’ links that they think are paid, but who knows what they’ll do to sites that consistently sell links without the ‘no-follow’ tag. Banishment? Penalty? Filter?

I’m hoping that John, Darren, and Steve don’t feel any effect when this goes down. In my opinion they are all established well enough to not be damaged by something like this, but who knows really?
Who This Will Hurt The Most

The sites that will really get killed are newer sites selling links. They don’t have enough in-bound links to overcome a filter. They don’t have enough time on the map to be well trusted. If you’re a new site I would seriously consider adding a ‘no follow’ to your paid links. If you don’t you better pray that you don’t get reported.

Why This Is Freaking Bull

Google obviously creates an insane amount of cash through their paid advertising, and is attempting to limit other methods of paid ads. That is hypocritical bull! In my opinion Google’s efforts will work, and sites like text-link-ads will have to add ‘no follows’ to the links. This will devalue the entire system.

Texts links are purchased to increase pagerank, and in the near future this method will no longer work. Yes, we will still be able to sell links, but we will have to add the ‘no follow’, which means that the links will no longer have an SEO benefit with Google.

Other Sites That Could Be Hurt By The Google Hunt

• Statcounter.com - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• Text-Link-Ads - They run the whole ‘buy pagerank’ operation.
• TextLinksBrokers - They also run a similar operation.
• OhGizmo - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• Xoops - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• Bollywood - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• SeoLog - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• CrunchyRoll - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• Dreamhosters - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.
• SERoundtable - Likely sells links without ‘no follows’.

What do you think? Is this really bull? Do you disagree with my point of view? Let me know!