It wasn’t long from the time when search engine optimizers first realized the important role backlinks played in search rankings until some enterprising soul came up with the idea of selling links.
Of course, it wasn’t long before bad actors started abusing it, just like nearly every other ranking hack in SEO. And Google, doing what Google does, began cracking down on the process.
There’s not much in the way of a gray area regarding Google’s position on the issue.
