Some people don’t realize that because Matt works for google, he will say stuff that benefits Google. Of course he’s going try and sway webmasters and SEO’s in favor of doing things that ultimately benefit google… Like scaring people into thinking you’ll be reported for buying or selling text links.

One thing everyone should learn from that whole thing is that if Google doesn’t want you buying text links it’s because IT WORKS!

Google was aware of how they could control the industry long ago when they first invented Pagerank, the only visual reference for people who want to see how popular their site is. Once they did this everyone had to reference Google to see how they fared…

Google created the entire SEO industry just as they created the whole “Made for Adsense” spam problem.

Whenever I think of Cutt-sie a few phrases come to mind; trojan horse, decoy, wolf in a lambs clothing. I generally find what he says is pretty inconsistent with what SEO authorities say. He is a decoy to blow smoke over confusing issues in SEO.

As for reporting links Google sells advertisements on their SERPs and make billions of dollars from it. Also, what is to stop me from turning evil and buying links for my competitors and then reporting them? This policy should be removed for the same reason you don’t get punished for your inlinks, only for your outbound links.

It seems to me Google is happy for you to buy links provided they are their links.