Seems to be more a warning of a new offensive against paid links with a side-swipe at hidden ones, it's certainly stirred up the ant-hill.... Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Hidden links

I was going to post about this but I was going to wait until this evening before digesting all the info that's floating about.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » How to report paid links

It seems ridiculous to blacklist paid links. How can Google determine if a link is paid for or free? They are requesting that webmasters snitch on other webmasters who may be using paid links. What's stopping me from purchasing paid links for a competitor in other to get them blacklisted?

The thinking behind this isn't very coherent at all.

If Google are to remove or diminish the power of linking of any sorts they're going to have to add a lot more weight to the other deciding factors in SEO.

More disclosure is required.

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Main development in paid linking has been the rise in PayPerBlog/Review type schemes where the link sits within relevant content, it'll be interesting to see if they're the ones being targeted...

I imagine it would be extremely difficult if not impossible for Google to detect if a link is a paid for one or not. If someone pays for a clean single link in relevant content how would they ever know? I think they would like people to indicate they are paid links by including "Paid Links" or such text close by to the links or by setting nofollow etc. It's really up to the webmaster if they want Google to know if the links are paid for or not but the worth of such links would obviously be much less so I imagine most wouldn't do it.

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MGS Web Design - Web Design Kildare, Web Design Ireland

This was mentioned on WebProNews Video Blog WebProNews Video Blog » Blog Archive » SES Live Interview with Google’s Vanessa Fox and Rand Fishkin of seomoz.org

In the interview the question was evaded, however, the way the question was asked would an indication on how Google could ascertain paid links.

Establish a list of sites which sell links and penalize links from those locations.

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Damien
Web Design Ireland | IRL Domain Name Registry | Diet Information | Blog |

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That's total BS on Google's part
I know they're trying to make the search results more organic but this kind of defense can't be implemented. Turning white hats into black hats is a magic trick.

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my blog | Apple Mac Blog | Indie Music Blog | *

I was recently considering using the rel-nofollow to safely interlink a network, glad now I didn't as the attribute seems to be suffering severe mission creep in the hands of G.....

They cant and that's the problem but they are looking for patterns and my guess they will be soon releasing the beast against paid links. The paid link report is probably just a quick and easy way for them to know who is buying links and then test whatever the big secret is.

I personally don't think they will be going after the very small link buyers or sellers but more of the ones who are basically link whores. There are people out there spending thousands per month buying links and others are making thousands selling them. Take Col Crawford on Digital Point as an example, he has over 100 blogs where he sells links, articles etc and makes a killing from it. Google know very well about him and it would be very stupid if they didn't as he is well known within DP. Now all of a sudden he has announced that he is selling shop and has already had an offer of $80,000 for the network of blogs. Google probably see two problems with his network, first being with the abuse of the PR & back links but second Google is missing out on the selling action. Call the money reason a conspiracy but when you have a couple of hundred Col's then it makes sense.

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I appreciate a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but even I'd have trouble putting this down to money :-)