Not only has Matt Cutts offered up some insight on getting out of Google's supplemental index, Google has also updated the "quality guidelines" area of their Webmaster Guidelines, providing a one-two punch for search marketers obsessed with Google's stance on all things optimization.
The main difference in the Google Webmaster guidelines is that Google is now offering up more information on many of the topics mentioned. (In other words, the rules are still mostly the same, Google is just giving you more information about them.
For example, if you've ever wondered what Google means by "no cloaking or sneaky redirects" you now have quick and easy access to a full answer.
When Googlebot indexes a page containing Javascript, it will index that page but it cannot follow or index any links hidden in the Javascript itself. Use of Javascript is an entirely legitimate web practice. However, use of Javascript with the intent to deceive search engines is not. For instance, placing different text in Javascript than in a noscript tag violates our webmaster guidelines because it displays different content for users (who see the Javascript-based text) than for search engines (which see the noscript-based text). Along those lines, it violates the webmaster guidelines to embed a link in Javascript that redirects the user to a different page with the intent to show the user a different page than the search engine sees. When a redirect link is embedded in Javascript, the search engine indexes the original page rather than following the link, whereas users are taken to the redirect target. Like cloaking, this practice is deceptive because it displays different content to users and to Googlebot, and can take a visitor somewhere other than where they intended to go.
It's also worth noting that Google has now included "official" statements on why they want webmasters to report paid links.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying links in order to improve a site's ranking is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
* Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the href tag
* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such link exchanges and purchased links. If you see a site that is buying or selling links, let us know by clicking Report spam in the index under the Tools menu in Webmaster Tools. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of paid links.
Interesting. Basically, Google is saying that if you sell links and refuse to nofollow them, then you're putting yourself (and your advertisers) at risk.
Somehow, I don't think that's going to go over well.
http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchbrief/senews/010139.html
