Link Value – Buying Valuable Links – W3C

Thanks to Barry Schwartz at SEW for pointing out this blog post by Emad Famous.

Basically, the W3C.org site has a page which recognizes supporters. In exchange for a $1000,00 donation, you get a link from a PR9 page, and one from a PR 7 page I know a lot of people who have paid more! (not something I recommend though)

Here’s how it works (for at least another hour) – W3C acknowledges W3C Supporters as follows:

Premier Supporters: Supporter logo, which links to Supporter Web site; Supporter product name, which links to Supporter product Web site.
Major Supporters: Supporter name, which links to Supporter Web site; Supporter product name.
Contributing Supporters: Supporter name, type of contribution (financial, goods).
W3C Supporters are acknowledged on the W3C Supporters page starting with receipt by W3C of the contribution. W3C acknowledges each contribution via electronic mail upon receipt of the contribution. Acknowledgment is for one year and is renewable. On an exceptional basis, W3C may authorize multiple-year contributions.

So, what do you think? Will google manually edit its algorithms to dimish the value of that page, which algorithmically, and properly, enjoys a PR 9 (and the PR 7 one too)? Will the “selling” of links be ignored because it’s “a donation” to a high value site? Or, are Google’s link farm / spam algortihms sophisticated enough that this one page will be automatically isolated, and its value will plummet, without it affecting the “authority” of the rest of the site?

While writing this post, the PR 7 on the page Supporters changed to greyed out – or PR0. Wow – those authority algorithms work fast! ;-)