Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.
I'll bet they do but they can only detect the most obvious cases. It would be possible for website to sell links that even a human couldn't identify as sold, so there are limits to what their algorithms could achieve.
Comments
Perhaps Google already algorithmically detects and quietly penalises such link-farming, or has tweaked their algorithm to minimise its impact. From their quality guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...):
Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.
I'll bet they do but they can only detect the most obvious cases. It would be possible for website to sell links that even a human couldn't identify as sold, so there are limits to what their algorithms could achieve.