FT Search Engine Spam

Just noticed the following on Jeremy Zawodny's blog. This is a pretty shit way to make money.

Basically moneysupermarket.com have paid the Financial Times (FT) to add some hidden links to their website. Of course when Google finds the link it will assign a hefty amount of PageRank to the page that's linked to (FT has a PageRank of 8). I wonder how much the ask for this type of service.

Google's Quality Guidelines specifically states:

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:
* Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

I wonder what the penalty is (if any) for this sort of search engine spam. I don't do it for fear of loosing what little Ranking I have with Google. I suppose I could report them but I doubt anything would be done to the FT.

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