It is very simple: If you sell ads on your site do so in such a way as to not skew search engines results, or you will be penalised.

Why people complain when google takes action against sites that are deliberately skewing their results is frankly beyond me. What exactly do you think they should do?

It is obvious, of course, that these so called ads that people buy from TLA are not really ads at all; nobody would buy them if they were.

Stop fooling yourself that TLA is just an advertising company. Ads from TLA are bought under the assumption that they will effect search engines. At the prices they ask they are simply a waste of money if the only thing they generate is traffic.

I was happily selling text links on a site that had maybe 2 visitors a day. If you’d bought ads on this site via adsense you’d have difficulty spending more than $2 a year on it. But they were paying me $180 a year for each link. $180 for maybe 2 clicks? … Do you seriously think anyone is willing to pay $90 a click? or even $180 per thousand impressions?

I’ll say it again: TLA aren’t in the business of web advertising. They are in the business of manipulating search results.

That’s an advertisement slot, not a results slot. There is no assumption of impartiality in advertisement slots.

So why are they being partial to my advertisement slot?
Because it affects their advertisement slots.

They are free to promote something which they otherwise would deem to not exist on the net, yet I can’t advertise Printer Paper?

So when TLA code a plugin which remotely calls blogroll links, what then? We no-follow everything? If is_banner then pr-1 ? Where does the nonsense stop?
The pollution is happening daily and on many fronts. Picking on TLA or any similar service is beyond stupid, there is no end, it’s an unwinnable battle and regardless of how many billions anyone has got you don’t start fights you can’t win.

Google chose their algorithm. It was their algorithm that gave us spam wasn’t it? And wasn’t the magical no-follow meant to cure that for us

no-follow, it was said by some, would stop or slow web form spam (blog comments, forums, etc) by taking away the carrot. It didn’t stop the spamming, but it did provide a valid way for webmasters to mark up untrusted or paid links.

What stops me adding those links to my blogroll? Nothing. Would I then be penalised? If no, I’ll do it. If yes then they are scanning for urls - and they could do that and effectively no-follow them.

I don’t know how Google is detecting TLA. Maybe they’re tracking the URLs used, or maybe they’re looking at the HTML formatting. As for why they’re not “assuming no-follow” for the ones they recognize: well, that takes away the disincentive for publishers like you. And then TLA is free to try to mung their HTML so that Google can’t detect and virtually no-follow the links. Without a disincentive, TLA (and others) will continue their practices. The ideal solution from Google’s perspective is for TLA to no-follow the links it generates. If they won’t do that, they have to penalize the sites that are using the links so that they either drop them, no-follow them, or put pressure on TLA.

it is hypocritical of Matt Cutts to tell me that TLA are not in Google yet take TLA’s money to allow them 1st position in a search.

That’s an advertisement slot, not a results slot. There is no assumption of impartiality in advertisement slots.

What stops me adding those links to my blogroll? Nothing. Would I then be penalised? If no, I’ll do it. If yes then they are scanning for urls - and they could do that and effectively no-follow them.

Google can check for hidden stuff, for background-coloured text, for cloaking, for identical content, for ad violations.

If Google have the technology to check for spammy blogrolls then they have the technology to know what urls they are looking for and to then no-follow or blacklist them.
What TLA do or do not do isn’t the point. Google has control here, Google can make all the allowances it needs for TLA and anyone else - they just choose not to.

And it is hypocritical of Matt Cutts to tell me that TLA are not in Google yet take TLA’s money to allow them 1st position in a search. I’m not daft enough to not make a connection between PR and cash - and I knew this would end. But the hypocrisy annoys the hell out of me and if he is at next WordCamp I will make a point of asking him about this from the balcony.

TLA is a leech on Google. They don’t create value — they make money by sullying the value created by Google. If you really believe this is a case of advertiser vs advertiser: prove it. Slap rel="nofollow" onto your TLA links. Watch your PageRank go back up, and watch TLA drop you because they don’t care about advertisement, they care about messing with Google’s search results.