Talk about Text-Link-Ads and Burn?!

I remember the day I heard about Text Link Ads a few years ago. I was surfing a couple of popular blogs and I saw an ad about Text Link Ads and how they can help you rent link on high PR sites. That’s way before Google decided to obliterate these guy on the SERPs. But it has been quite sometime since these guys got ranked for their own name.

Google does allow them to advertise (which is so nice of them as Google still wants your cash even if your service can’t get ranked high on the SERPs), but it has gone way overboard trying to stop these guys from selling links. I am not a link buyer, and I never recommend buying links (even though in some cases it makes sense). But I strongly believe that Google will penalize sites that talk about Text-Link-Ads in a positive manner. I knew the risks before I ran my story a few months ago, and it seems I have finally gotten what I was hoping for. A Google PR slap.

I am a SEO guy. I don’t like to be paranoid. But it is mind boggling to me to go from PR 3 to 0 on this site even though I have not done anything Black Hat. All my blogs, even the ones I don’t pay attention to, have gained PR with the latest Google PR update, but this site has been dropped dramatically. Does it matter? Not really. I don’t have much respect for Google’s algorithm and their ways of milking the consumers for money any way. And to be honest, PR doesn’t matter these days as it used to. So I am at peace with this whole thing.

For Google to slap sites for discussing things they don’t like is incomprehensible. Google has been milking us marketers by introducing bogus factors, but how dare them take my PR away What’s your take? Did you manage to improve your PR with the latest update?