If you ever wondered if those text link ads, or selling links on your web site is going to decrease your value, or keep you from getting a decent page rank in Google, the facts or out in search engine land, with an interesting set of details about text link ads themselves.

As search engine land reports, Google is not telling anyone what to do with their site. But there are penalties for doing things that Google thinks are ways of manipulating the number of links to a web site, and if they were bought or otherwise.

Overall, the move takes Google into a new era of attacking paid links, allowing it more precise weapons than it has had in the past. For example, both the Stanford Daily and New Scientist are among several prominent sites that sell links. Google has not really been able to penalize such sites as that would hurt core relevancy. People expect them to show up. By using PageRank decreases (something Google first experimented with in the SearchKing case in 2002), Google can hurt the perceived value of buying links from a particular site without harming core relevancy. Source: Search Engine Land

While Text Link ads own story is here.

The interesting idea then is what happens with PayPerPost, essentially it is the same thing as text link ads, only there is some context wrapped around it. If you get or purchase PPP (PayPerPost) articles about your web site, will Google start penalizing for that. There might not be a restraint of trade issue here, but there are some ramifications that extend well beyond buying and selling links on a web site. We link to those things we think are cool, and we do use PPP when something comes up that makes sense for the web site.

Penalizing someone for this in terms of reduced page rank, or no page rank like this site today (page rank zero if you want to check it out), this opens up the door to how Google works. Not only how it works, but what is involved with people working on systems or processes like text link ads and payperpost to create buzz and links to the site that has ordered the service.

Well worth investigating, especially if this leads to punitive measures being taken against a web site for this choice in creating buzz or making money off their site.