Paid links violation of Google Guidelines or not?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Serge Pon: Paid links violation of Google Guidelines or not? ;
  According to my knowledge it is clear violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to buy or to sell links.
  PokerStars is trying to sue me, and Judge asked PokerStars solicitor is it violation of Google’s Webmaster Guideline to buy links. ;
  Solicitor answered:
  My clients say no, but the Google policy changes from time to time. It
  depends on the nature, my clients say, of the site. So take a pure spam website,
  something that says “Poker, poker, poker” and was of no consumer interest. ;
  If one paid for that, then that would be said by Google to be in breach of their
  guidelines. If there is a genuine piece being written and my clients can encourage them
  and pay for them to mention and link to PokerStars within that piece, then they would say that is not in breach of the guidelines. That is my clients’ stance.
  When I provided Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Link Schemes explained, solicitor continue to argue that in some cases it is OK to buy links.
  
  What evidence to put before court to prove that buying links is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines?
  
  P.S. I have provided information from Google guides.
  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?vid=1-635780948167894120-1891733431
  https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1&hl=en
• 
  Jim Munro: I am not an expert, Serge, but I think Google's policy has been consistent over the long term. I am sorry to be the bearer of what I think might be bad news but as far as I know, it's perfectly OK to buy or sell links without being contrary to Google Guidelines as long as the links are nofollowed.
  
  Similarly, if a link is a commercial link, ie paid-for, then it must be nofollowed or the link will be contrary to the Google guidelines regardless of the circumstances or relativity.
• 
  Serge Pon: Jim, thank you for your answer we are talking about do follow links. For me it is clear that do follow paid links violating Google Guidelines, but I find it is difficult to prove to the court. ;
• 
  Jim Munro: It's been a while since I read the documentation but from vague memory there is an answer which clearly spells it out. It's not contentious so I reckon that ;+John Mueller ;would have no qualms about clarifying. I would consider asking the question during an Office Hours hangout to get a public video clip you can take to court.
  
  https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-hours
• 
  Serge Pon: Jim, thank you again for advice. ;
• 
  Steve Maitland: Nice bit of advice keep it coming.
• 
  John Mueller:  ;http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch/2007/12/information-about-buying-and-selling.html has a nice timeline going back to 2003. ;
• 
  Jim Munro: Thank you, John. :)
• 
  Serge Pon: John, thanks a lot. I am drafting my response for tomorrow's court, so hopefully I will be able to prove, that paid links which passes the value violating Google guideline. ;
• 
  Serge Pon: +John Mueller ;thank you again, one more question, I am trying to report to Google 1000s of paid links bought by PokerStars, but Google Web Spam report don't have bulk report option. Do you know how I can report those links to Google? ;
• 
  Jim Munro: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1
• 
  Serge Pon: +Jim Munro ;Thank you, this tool I am using a lot, but as I said, it does not have bulk reporting, PokerStars  ;bought thousands of links, so it is quite difficult to report them all.
• 
  Jim Munro: Maybe I am misunderstanding but I don't think they are asking for every link. They are asking for the buyers and the sellers. They probably know how to work out the rest. If there are more sellers, you could list them in the 'additional details' ;
• 
  Serge Pon: +Jim Munro Thank you Jim, I have been reporting those links to Google for several months, but PS websites still not penalized.
• 
  Jim Munro: That is not unusual but there might be a proportionate penalty that is not apparent.
• 
  Serge Pon: +Jim Munro ;I am checking PokerStars websites for penalty every day, no results yet. For example when my former colleagues reported  ;party  ;poker website last year, website was completely de indexed. ;
• 
  Jim Munro: It's indexed OK now. I do not know how it works but ;I don't think it would be similar to a good citizen being charged with murder. What if the penalty is more like a sanction for insider trading?
  
  According to +SEMrush ;, pokerstars(dot)com has 669K links from 4.5K domains and 4K IP addresses and the first few look kosher. It would take a lot to mess that up.
• 
  John Mueller: We use those spam reports in a variety of ways -- it's not always the case that you'd see a direct change (especially when our algorithms are already filtering things out). You're welcome to send me a google doc if you've already compiled things, it would be a shame for me to pass up such an opportunity :). I can't promise that the webspam team will take visible action, but they'll get the full set to check out, which sometimes helps.
• 
  Serge Pon: +John Mueller ;PokerStars are trying to hide this information, so they hired solicitors and Court order restricted me of publishing those paid links and sharing it with anybody except legal representative or controlling organisations. So if I  ;will get an official email from anybody from Google I will be able to send all links, with prices paid, anchors and other information. PokerStars trying to destroy me in order to hide this info. Please email me your request [email protected]
• 
  Serge Pon: +Jim Munro ;Court order restricted me of publishing examples of paid links which I discovered during my employment at PS, but here is one example from SEM Rush, so you can see how PS buying links, if you will analyse in SEM Rush different PS domains, for different countries you will be able to see interesting anchors and to what internal pages links are pointing and picture will become crystal clear for you. ;
  onthetryline.com/2011/12/stephen-jones-to-fight-for-wales-recall.html
  anchor “Texas Hold-Em”
• 
  Serge Pon: +John Mueller ; Jon, I have not received any emails yet, please let me know your email.  ;PokerStars solicitors convincing the court that it is OK to buy "do follow" links and it is not in violation of Google Webmaster Guideline, based on this information court already restricted me for publishing this information. PokerStars is multi billion company with many open court cases for them it is common to manipulate court decisions. They not even afraid to make untruthful witness statements in front of the court, for example some some SEO Search managers in their witness statement said that PokerStars does not violate Google Webmaster Guidelines, but last year had at least one manual penalty from Google team. Please contact me ASAP.  ;