Blog roll vs site wide links

I guess you missed something 2-3 months ago. They even said they would send out messages in a different format for it.

It's pretty clear really, there are even other IM forums that forbid the selling of blogroll links cause of what Matt said.

To quote him from an interview:

We’ve done a good job of ignoring boilerplate, site wide links. In the last few months, we’ve been trying to make the point that not only is link buying like that not doing any good, we’re turning the dial up to let people know that certain link spam techniques are a waste of money.

http://searchengineland.com/live-blo...dvanced-123513

There was also another more detailed post about this at their own blog or site I think but I can't find it, it was an announcement that they started to send out warning messages for exactly that.

I thought it was pretty much common knowledge by now.

Here another link where he specifically mentions widget links as an example, scroll down a bit:

If you do a search for [widgetbait matt cutts] you'll find tons of stories where I discourage people from putting keyword-rich anchortext into their widgets; see http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/...s-061608.shtml for example. So this message is a way to tell you that not only are those links in your widget not working, they're probably keeping that page from ranking for the phrases that you're using."


http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...1_archive.html

When you think about it it makes perfect sense, I agree maybe blog roll links can still work find when you DON'T use exact anchor txt but the url itself instead. As it might be more about anchor txt penalty then the link itself, but well he does mention "not only are those links in your widget not working...."

Seems clear enough to me to better stay away from them, besides that they invite people to report suspicious links to Google, so I quit doing blogrolls right away, I don't need clients reporting my network sites.