Just in case you haven't heard, Google's been on the warpath recently against PAID links. They cracked down on TextLinkAds.com in the past few weeks. Now they are going after bloggers who get paid per post via payperpost.com
What's the PENALTY? Google Page Rank of ZERO. That's right... Google will slap your PR down to PR0 if it sees your site listed as a paid blogger at payperpost.com
http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/...-goes-aft.html
Here's the official comment from the mother company of payperpost.com:
What does this mean for Advertisers?
If you are still using PR as your measure for influence you will be missing out on a lot a great blogs and bloggers. While the general population has maintained their ranking some of our better bloggers have been hit by Google. You may want to consider using Tacks and Alexa instead of PR for future campaigns until we implement RealRank.
What does this mean for Bloggers?
If you have been hit by Google unfortunately there is little we can do. We know that Google PR does not reflect your actual traffic and it is sad that Google chooses to over look that to protect their own bottom line. We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks "bob") that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.
This is Censorship.
One of our programmers actually had his blog de-ranked last night because he mentions PPP often as an employee. He has never taken a sponsored post, nor does he sell sponsored links. He is simply blogging about his day to day experience here. I find this outrageous. I encourage you to write to Google and your Congressmen.
Discuss. I find the "censorship" claim a bit problematic.