My first suspicion was that it was paid for by a black hat SEO company/person that wants to mix in “legit” site links into these link buying schemes to make it more complicated for Google to detect and crack down on them.

However, after following that link to the main T-Mobile page and seeing their other obvious SEO attempts (like the keyword overloading in the title), I suspect they hired a SEO service provider who is trying all of this stuff, some of it falling into the “black hat” category (buying PageRank via TLA).

If all TLA links contain rel=”nofollow”, then they’ll not be worse off. However, prices will surely fall since these links cannot be counted on to boost SERPs, but only organic traffic.

It is for the reason that all links sold with WP Text Ads come with nofollow by default, although it can be turned off (not recommeded.)

http://www.wptextads.com/blog/2007/05/17/does-google-hate-paid-links-not-really-says-matt-cutts/

Alex

Just to clarify, I don’t necessarily have a problem with people taking advantage of an error in the PageRank algorithm in and of itself; my issue with it is that it’s intentionally skewing the search results that are useful to other people, and those people are the ones who loose out.

I think I’ve probably covered this one enough, but for me (even outside of the ethical matters) I wouldn’t be willing to risk a permanent ding on my PageRank just for the sake of making a few bucks.

Since I do believe that Google is likely to close that hole and penalize (potentially without warning) those who are exploiting it, I think it’s just wiser not to take that chance. Anyone who waits until that happens will have waited too long, because the damage will have been done and they won’t be able to undo it at that point.

I don’t know about their relationship with Google as an advertiser, but I do know they’ve already been penalized in the search index for their own site.

As for sitting on the fence, I don’t think that’s a good position to take. Even if you’re willing to overlook the unethical nature of the foundation of their business model, you also have to consider that Google is under no obligation to notify you before penalizing your site. AND once that happens, it can be very difficult or impossible to unravel, as you and others have already found in dealing with them on other matters.

The link is correct, you just overlooked that Google Adsense is advertising TLA on that site and many others. So, if Google decides to penalize TLA it should at least stop advertising whether or not TLA is paying for the ads. I’m sure it’s in their TOS to not support backhat SEO services.

I can only assume that you’re talking about the fact that Google sells “text link” ads through their service, but it’s completely different, because they’re all nofollow, and do not affect PageRank. Ads from TLA (the company), on the other hand, are exclusively sold in order to game PageRank, so it’s about as opposite as can be.