The website, mirror.co.uk, appears to be accused of selling links to Money Extra. There is nothing wrong with this, and there will not be any court proceedings on the matter. Google, however, does not like this arrangement and deems websites caught doing so worthy of penalties, the equivalent of being sent to an Internet jail.
While there is no concrete proof, recent articles appear to have links directly to Money Extra throughout the articles. That offers some truth to the fact that they are backlinking. The Mirror has not said there is a partnership with Money Extra or why they would link back to Money Extra’s website.
So far, proof of The Mirror having paid links in their articles is shown with three recent website publications this year. The paid links were in articles in August, which may be a tipper for Google. Many other similarities exist between the three pieces. Each story seems to be written solely as a promotion for Money Extra. Also, different anchor texts linking back to one single webpage were found throughout The Mirror articles.
After seeing three articles written in the same manner, one would assume the two are working together somehow. Doing this could inadvertently alert Google to the heavy backlinking happening here.
The Mirror never associates a name with the links to indicate it is for Money Extra. This opens the door to questions of whether these sponsored articles are for Money Extra or an example of a partnership they are willing to make with other businesses in the future.
Even though Google doesn’t necessarily like paid links, The Mirror follows the advice Google gives if they do it. For paid links, the external links have to be a nofollow link, which is what each one contained in The Mirror articles in August is.
The Mirror is allowed to do this, but they may run the risk of Google hitting them with penalties and with the public questioning their true intentions with the website.
