We don't like Spam 2.0 and we did our part lately for better declaration of paid stuff. And since last weekend, Google doesn't like it either and is penalizing webpages, which sell text links or paid reviews. Matt Cutts apparently always warned about selling links without proper usage (like rel=”nofollow), but since the last PageRank update of Google, it looks like it indeed happened (but in general, PageRanks fall and raise all the time and as every other SEO will tell you, is not important anyway :) )

Is this the beginning of the end of Spam 2.0? If you need a high PR to get good money with textlinks, but your PR falls if you do that (and your search engine position with it), it's maybe a lot less interesting for the average and self-respecting site owner to do it. And if you do it correctly (with rel=”nofollow”), your clients don't get any linklove anymore and paying for them doesn't look that attractive anymore 


But maybe it's just a big plot by Google, so that everyone will use AdSense in the future, since that certainly won't have any decrease of your PR as consequence (but also doesn't generate linklove for the advertiser). It's certainly not only for the love of humankind Google does such things.

Via Markus Tressl