A new study reveals that old-fashioned word of mouth is proving a great tool for gaining sales on-line in the 21^st century.

The increased use of social media, such as mobile phones and blackberrys, as well as internet message boards, forums and blogs, makes it so much easier for people to pass on information about products and services these days.

The research in America – called “The Impact of Social Media on Purchase Behavior” – revealed that many consumers have passed on brand information found on-line, and of those questioned 60% used social media websites to share the info.

It also found that around a third of consumers would like to share their opinions about a brand or product with a representative, and 67% are likely to pass on information from a brand representative to other people.

Apparently almost three-quarters said that most of the info they passed on was positive.

Meanwhile, the same study (carried out by firm OTX on behalf of DEI Worldwide, a social media marketing agency) shows that over half of consumers believe that information from a brand representative is more valuable than what is found on a company’s website.

And some 57% of consumers are likely to take action based on information from a brand representative, such as buying a product or shopping at the retailers.

It seems that sometimes the oldest advertising techniques are still the best. The study surely offers food for thought for even the smallest on-liner retailers: go out and get texting, emailing and blogging…

It all depends on whether you think it’s cheating to use paid text links, or not.

But if you’re firmly in the “yes, let’s have more paid link texts” camp (which many people are) then you’ll be delighted to hear about the latest service that claims to undetectable by Google.

Hurrah, say them, for InLinks.

But the new service has caused (yet another) a storm at Google, where Matt Cutts has made it very clear that “selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines”. Other search engines are of a similar opinion.

There is some cautionary advice from internet experts, too, many of whom believe that buying links should only ever be a short-term solution for jump-starting your rankings

while you swing your PR/marketing machine into full gear.

Google, it’s been claimed, has a preference for brands and the more web owners work normal PR and advertising the better your rankings will be. Apparently!