The ASA will investigate SEO practices from eConsultancy reports that the Advertising Standards Authority (AMA) in the UK will require web sites to disclose if they are placing paid links on their web site. In addition, Google is backing this.

What Google wants and what the AMA wants are slightly different things. Google wants the links to be nofollowed, which technically won’t reveal to a normal web user if a link is paid or not. ASA wants the link to be disclosed to the normal web user, so they know it is a paid link.

Andrew Girdwood explained:

This seems like pretty significant news if it pans out. Personally, I am all for disclosing to end users if the links are paid. Really.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.