Digg Sells Text Links, Adds NoFollow

Muy interesante! As it turns out, Digg has started selling sponsored text links on its homepage. And they are not trying to hide it or anything. There’s practically a giant flashing neon sign pointing out the paid text link. Here is the current one that is live right now. It’s a link to a credit report site, and it’s highlighted in red:

Digg Sells Text Links then NoFollows them
Digg Sells Text Links then NoFollows them

The sequence of events is interesting, too, because at first the link was dofollow. Then today the link was nofollowed. How exciting. I wonder what Matt Cutts is thinking about Digg selling links. Anyways, I’m sure we’ll be hearing about this for the next few weeks. Be on the lookout for the paid link fallout. Or not. For more on Digg selling links and how it might impact the SEO world, go here and here. But also, here’s some free advice from Greg Boser‘s twitter page:

I’m curious who the genius is that told Experian buying a straight link on Digg was a good idea. Pretty f’n clueless. Just an FYI for all the new kids: If you have a national brand that ranks #2, you don’t buy links on high profile sites. Especially on high profile sites that a lot of people hate.