Sean sends in this:

<<Someone could email a 100,000 churches saying they are a site discouraging sex, then after they get 10,000 links, convert to a porn site and be on the top of sex related terms. Or, a site opposing gambling, get 10,000 links, then become a gambling site on top of the engines.>>

Sean points to this discussion as a related case study (http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/cb0fb94b95356c17/e420564c9ca68b47?lnk=gst&q=testprepreview&rnum=1#e420564c9ca68b4).

[Thanks Sean!]

nice thinking :)
though you can get arrested for that. isn't it?

what can Google do here, nada. There is no violations happening correct ??

whether it's moral is a different story.. but that opens a good question how can one black list such efforts ?

Philipp, How long would it take to get 10,000 links to the church site though?

Yeah OK, 10,000 is a little too much, but maybe say 100 quality backlinks...

Bait and switch of course is a good way to game any system, but what really is supposed to happen? I don't see Google emailing the sites that posted the links and asking if they really want to link to the site in question. It certainly isn't scalable.

They hold webmasters responsible for the content on a site if it get's hacked and delist it even though the webmaster didn't make a conscience decision to be hacked, conversely if a webmaster makes a decision to link to something, no matter how bad that decision may be, they'll accept it and process the links as usual.

It kind of folds into this whole paid links debate. Trying to decide intent on a link good/bad/or indifferent is next to impossible without a discussion with the site owner.

Anyone can buy an expired domain name and set up a new site. The new site might be related to the old site, it might be a redesign, or it might be something totally different. Yes, the existing links were for the old "content", but they're still there. What should Google do? Ignore the old links? Based on age? How is that scalable?

You don't even have to go to such extremes – just take an existing travel site and fill it with ads and affiliate offers. The content is still the same, but the goal of the site has changed.

How far would you go if your competitor used shady methods?

This is a FTC violation, etc. So you can get shut down for it. So not the best google strategy.