Many webmasters complain that no action is been taken against websites that blatantly use paid link to boost their SERPs and page rank. It is common knowledge that a whole link selling/buying industry is flourishing.

Links from blogs and websites are sold and bought in large numbers. In a high profile incident, J.C. Penney was found to be indulging in buying of links on a massive scale to boost its search rankings on Google. Once the news came out in open, Google did penalize it briefly. After few months, J.C. Penney’s search rankings were restored to great extent.

Webmasters and SEO consultants have been wondering if buying links is a good strategy considering absence of any concrete action from Google. Though, webmasters have received notices regarding unnatural links, it is not that widespread as of now. These notices have surely not made much impact on link buyers and sellers.

Will we be seeing any further activity on this front? Will Google be able to curb this menace and that too without inflicting any collateral damage like we saw with Panda update?