Another hardlink question
 

So I found a legit hq website that offers hardlinks for $500 a year. The question is that the popular kw it ranks for #1 in google indexes a bit different version of this site.

Like the guy is selling links on root and theres a friends section where the links appear, and he ranks #1 with a root.com/?from=45 where there is no "friends" section.

Not sure if that matters for me as a buyer ? Is that some sort of trick ?

No idea if trick or not, but if I was paying $500 I would like to get some traffic too, not just seo thing.
Not sure what you mean by a different version of the site, as long as it's same subdomain/domain with good rank it's fine.
Google treats differently subdomains.
subexample1.example.com is seen as something different from example.com or something2.example.com, each subdomain is seen as separate different site. Or at least that’s what I’ve had heard and read.

try it for 2 weeks and see if it worth before consider buying it yearly