Avoid selling and buying links that pass PageRank

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank: " . . . If you receive a warning for selling links that pass PageRank in Google's Webmaster Tools, you'll see a notification message to look for "possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank." That's an indication that your site has lost trust in Google's index. To address the issue, make sure that any paid links on your site don't pass PageRank. You can remove any paid links or advertorial pages, or make sure that any paid hyperlinks have the rel="nofollow" attribute. After ensuring that no paid links on your site pass PageRank, you can submit a reconsideration request and if you had a manual webspam action on your site, someone at Google will review the request. After the request has been reviewed, you'll get a notification back about whether the reconsideration request was granted or not. We do take this issue very seriously, so we recommend you avoid selling (and buying) links that pass PageRank in order to prevent loss of trust, lower PageRank in the Google Toolbar, lower rankings, or in an extreme case, removal from Google's search results."

Microsoft preparing Windows Blue public preview with significant search ...
The Verge
We're told that the Bing team is working closely on Windows Blue to improve search in a significant way. A number of scenarios are being targeted, including the ability for users to search for a movie and have apps surface that content and provide a ...

A Shocking Expose of China’s Black PR Industry Implicates Government Officials, is Quickly Deleted from the Web: " . . . . Charging money to delete posts is illegal — this came as a surprise to many of Xinxun and Yage’s employees, according to the Caixin article — but some black PR firms employ even darker tactics. In a pinch, some firms have been known to create fake government stamps and use them to send faux-official takedown notices to get articles pulled from the web. Another tactic is a more classic form of blackmail: the PR firm uses its connections or bribery to place a negative article online, then approaches the company that’s the subject of the article and offers to have it removed — for a high fee, of course. Yage’s client list apparently includes very high profile companies including China Mobile, Pizza Hut, and Hengda Real Estate among many others. Corporate entities aren’t the only people making use of black PR firms to delete negative stories, though. According to Caixin’s report — and this is probably why it was deleted — government officials are also willing to pay to get embarrassing posts about themselves and their administrations deleted. . . . "


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