Paid links are paid links, Matt. Many link sellers refuse to put links to certain sites on their pages. That constitutes just as much editorial review as Yahoo! places in links that it sells (especially considering that they charge annual fees for their paid links).

You seriously need to stop trying to convince people that Yahoo! doesn’t sell links. They sell links, they sell links, they sell links.

Everyone knows that Google doesn’t threaten Yahoo! and other large link-selling sites the way it threatens smaller sites. You’re treading on extremely thin ice on this issue, as you always have been, and the inappropriate exclusions for Yahoo! really do infuriate many people in the Webmastering community.

In regards to the following comment:

“And I doubt Rand was expecting any direct PageRank impact from Avatar’s prweb.com press release. But what is helping is good content like the articles about non-conforming loans and the new blog on that site. That’s why when I see strong links from Yahoo’s directory, Dmoz, and Wikipedia to Avatar, I’m not very surprised.”

You’re absolutely right, but I think there’s more to the story that your readers might find valuable in regards to PR and Online Visibility
:
My experience is two fold:

1) PR is content, and rich content. PR on PRWeb.com (the Alexa leader in online PR) and the top-ranked PR distribution engine for gaining online visibility permeates everything from Inktomi to Yahoo! News and Google News to the blogsphere and corporate news sites. It’s “push” content, and it’s specifically formatted to provide fast, easy syndication and be rich in keyphrases, relevant links and search-friendly attachments. This is the exact opposite of passive content - no waiting!

2) Though a single online press release may not change page rank for a given site, if formatted correctly a release distributed by PRWeb will receive 150-350 backlinks in Google SERPs within a week or so. If you sequentially deliver weekly PR like this, you’ll find from 5,000 to 65,000 mentions within 3-6 months (I have the stats to prove it).

Good, well written, audience and industry specific content is the basis for good SEO, right? In my experience, by utilizing PRWeb, tapping their editorial staff and ensuring good links and keyworded attachments, I can get more bang for the buck faster using PRWeb than I do in almost any other area (caveat: if your site lacks valuable content and good organic SEO in the first place, then force-feeding online PR will not save you over the long haul).

I did a recent case study on this that you are free to download here. Let me know if this makes sense, or if I’m missing something here.

http://301url.com/Case-Studies

Thanks for keeping the industry on its toes, Matt!

Best regards,
Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent.com

Too bad I didn’t see your post earlier or I would have responded.

>>If there is even a hint that Google is banning folks because of the presence of their AdSense codes in a web page…

I’m not sure of your point here. An Adsense ID is published on every page where you wish ads to appear. If you are not an Adsense advertiser or don’t know how it works, then I could understand this statement.

There is no secret code - its there in plain site - anyone can view it in 30 seconds by looking at a page’s source. I point this out to Google on every copyright violator I report and these reports are likewise published on the web by ChillingEffects.com. Sorry, no leaking of classified material here!

Earl Grey’s website was an Adsense Partner prior to redirecting his traffic to this blog. The fact that the site was an Adsense partner was very significantly omitted from the Newsweek article. There are lots of reasons for spamming, and generating Adsense revenue is right up there.

My point stands - if Google can clearly state in an article that a website is unworthy to be listed in its search results, it should likewise be unworthy to display advertisements from Adwords.

How would you feel as an advertiser if Google effectively says in public that a site is a known spammer, yet feels its still OK to put your ads on this site and charge you for any clicks that it generates? How would you rate the quality of those clicks?

Mr. Grey in his own words specializes in putting up quick sites, generating a lot of quick traffic(?), generating some quick revenue, and then moves on to another site when he gets caught and banned.

This is a common technique by a lot of Google Adsense spammers