Instead of writing a new post did Matt Cutts add a long update in Q&A form to his existing post from April about “How To Report Paid Links“, which received over 600 comments by readers of his blog.
The update includes 16 questions in to…

Matt Cutts added an update to the paid links discussion to his old post from April this Friday. The comments address several of the things that caused a heated debate over the last months, but still left a few things…

I believe you will find this post interesting as well. Some new developments since we started our discussion.

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Note by Carsten: It’s published at the other post.

It was in the other thread about affilpedia. I made a post about 5 hours ago and it said something about being in moderation.

FYI. Google does not know as much as they want you to believe. I just read a funnt post by Jeremy from Yahoo!. You might find it interesting.

I also referenced a case in my post series where Google would fair to detect the affiliate link. It was a at another blog. You will find it, if you want to know about a real world example.

In that example am I an affiliate and the other blogger is not, but our links are identical. I get a commission check and the other blogger does not. Both links were given for the same reason, but I signed up for the affiliate program when I saw it, the other blogger did not

To your other comment.

I know Matts posts from September 2005 and before, starting with the contribution to the post at the official google blog that introduced nofollow as the cure for blog spam, December 2005, end of 2006, January 2007 and April 2007.

Did you noticed some changes in is statements over the time? Also, did I not say that he said something in a post at his blog about it, but in a blog comment and that was either in December 2006 or January 2007.

Btw. Did you read the 4 part series at SEJ? I referenced to a lot of things starting with the 2003 “Florida Update”.

Click Here to Learn about Affiliate Marketing

I had a post that is not showing up from today that got stuck again. Hopefully somebody goes ahead and upgrades this board or fixes the problem because it is annoying lots of people. I know it’s annoying you from reading the other post you made. Thanks.

What I’m saying is you misinterpreted what you read or are remembering it wrong. Like I said, if he said that, you would have a link. Also, if he said that, it would have been a big story and people would be talking about it in forums, blogs etc. They’re not.

“Don’t you think that if it is not a problem and nothing to worry about, that he would simply state something like “I am not talking about typical affiliate links here, but links that are traded publicly or on the black market for the sole intend to manipulate ranking in the SERPS”.

I don’t think he needs too, it was pretty obvious to what they were talking about. He clearly laid out he was talking about links bought and sold for PR/SERP purposes. Here it is again and it’s from Sep. 2005

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/

I’m quoting him using nofollow:

“What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.”

“get PageRank via buying links.”

That’s clear as day.

I know you want a direct answer from him but if you haven’t gotten it in over a year and half even when you asked it on his blog, I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it’s nothing to worry about. You’re the only one I know who is worrying about it, I don’t know one other affiliate.

And it’s not like it’s hard to tell which links are affiliate links are which aren’t. They know all about affiliate marketing and affiliate links.