links for 2007-12-05

I just got back from PubCon in Las Vegas. There was definitely a lot of heat going on in regards to paid links/reviews. I actually wrote an entry on how Matt Cutts ruined the link buying session on our Raven blog – an entry that was half joking and half serious. Ultimately, it looks like the practice of link buying is going to continue to be a behind the scenes event – with paranoid advertisers and publishers trying to evade detection from Google. Although, I predict either Izea (or someone else) will get a lot more clever in how they broker links/reviews. In the big picture, I really don’t see much difference between link buying (and paid reviews) and airline magazines (or any publication for that matter) that showcase the hottest companies in a region. We all know that each of those companies ponied up $5k to be in their list or schmoozed someone who was a publishing/editorial decision maker