Yes- I know.. This is almost old news, but I’m playing catch up . 
V7n has a new service where they sell contextual links at http://contextual.v7n.com/. In a post entitled “Undetectable” spam, Matt Cutts pointed out that the link scheme
probably violates our quality guidelines and the guidelines of other major search engines.
V7n’s response:
The links are reviewed by both the V7 staff, and by bloggers.We’ve rejected and refunded some orders, and bloggers can reject any link. Google’s standard of editorial review is met not once, but twice.Funny how Matt singles out V7N, while being oddly quiet about PPP, ReviewMe, Text Link Ads, etc.
Did this cause and uproar! Bloggers left over 140 comments with many calling the idea of detecting contextual links “laughable”.
I’ll be watching to see how this works out. I expect V7n’s program to be successful.
V7n is a valuable resource. I’m not active at their forums, but I did participate in the v7ndotcom-elursrebmem SEO contest.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Matt has been saying nothing of importance for quite some time now. Many of his posts include empty warnings. Yet he hangs out with well known spammers who he has met on the conventions. I suggest to people no longer to bother reading his blog. It´s a waste of time, and time is money. We all have our jobs to do. And he is doing his, using his readers to put fear into others where there is no reason to worry. Pretty sad to see a good guy get corrupted like that.
- Mike Dammann
I’m starting to agree with you on this.
He’s scaring honest webmasters and negatively affecting link behavior. Hell- I have to keep reminding myself that reciprocal linking in my niche is good.
Nothing is wrong with exchanging listings, people link to friends, related business they network with and such. Bloggers do without even knowing about the search engine benefit. The fact that it does or doesn´t help with Google rankings is GOOGLE´s PROBLEM and not mine. The fact that they are unable to sort things out and try to make us design and develop with Google´s wellbeing in mind is beyond rediculous, but then again … looking at the suck up comments on everyone of Matt´s posts I am not surprised that it makes him think that whatever he says will be followed. If Matt jumps off a bridge a million webmasters will do the same …
Mike