I knew that Google stopped allowing ads for search phrases like ‘buy links‘ and ‘text link ads‘ a while ago, but apparently, Google stopped accepting ads for ‘link building‘ as well. After doing some research, I found out that a member at WMW noticed this too, around a month ago.

According to the Google AdWords help center, “This keyword is not permitted to show your ads in the targeted location.”

Google still displays ads for keywords like ‘linkbuilding‘, ‘link baiting‘ and even ‘purchase links‘, though.

UPDATE: A reply from Google came in (translated from Dutch):
“Advertising for ‘link building’ isn’t allowed, because Google doesn’t encourage building links artificially in order to obtain higher search engine rankings, and can even penalize this. I don’t know if you can interpret ‘link building’ in an other way, but Google sees this query as ‘building links for higher rankings’. This is why advertising for this keyword isn’t allowed.”

4 Comments »

1. I am a webmaster who is NOT afraid of Google.

   Comment by Martin Espericueta — May 19, 2008 @ 5:27 am

2. Very interesting observation. Longer phrases such as “Link building expert(s)” are still showing ads.

   Comment by Mark Alves — May 23, 2008 @ 2:44 pm

3. I’ve noticed the same thing for months now. I understand “buy links”, but I always wondered why Google didn’t want people to advertise for “link building”.

   There are certainly many legitimate companies (like yours) that do a nice job of link building for those clients that just do not have the time or expertise to do it themselves.

   Comment by Arnie — May 26, 2008 @ 1:33 am

4. [...] Google je prestao countati linkove unutar oglasa (kako lijepo… uskoro će svi linkovi postati praktički bezvrijedni…eto zašto naginjem contentu). [...]

   Pingback by Besplatni linkovi #2 | SC Media — June 1, 2008 @ 11:03 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website