Comments on: Life after Text Link Ads

By: omft

omft — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:58:11 +0000

google is a cruel and unusual force on the net but a force none the less and its actions may on;y be questioned by those with something lost

By: estetik

estetik — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:31:27 +0000

May be you were not slapped by Google but in fact your backlinks were reduced in total number or in PR values.

By: estetik

estetik — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:30:09 +0000

My sites PR was reduced to 3 from 5. May be you were not slapped but the reason may be different. You should make a search for your backlinks. Your backlinks may be reduced in Pr or total number. Google recently I think have changed the algoritma which caused major drops in PR values. In fact PR will have no value in near future.

By: Jon Combe

Jon Combe — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:04:04 +0000

I’ve just this weekend removed text-link-ads from a website I run that recently had it’s PageRank slammed down to zero and, more importantly, gets much less google traffic than it did even a few days ago.

I see as of today your PageRank hasn’t yet been restored but have you found any difference in traffic to your site since removing the ads?

It’s obviously way to early for me to tell.

By: Robert Synnott

Robert Synnott — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:27:06 +0000

I can tell you without any real fear of contradiction that someone who is paying hundreds of dollars a month for one inconspicuous link on a website which has no relation to what they do doesn’t give a damn about end users clicking through.

It’s different if it’s targeted advertising on a related site, of course, but 99.9% of ‘text link ads’ had nothing to do with the site that they were on.

By: Pádraig Brady

Pádraig Brady — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:12:54 +0000

It may devalue the link placement somewhat,
but would not “defeat the whole point”, as
the links are visible to end users who can click through,
just like for google’s adds.

By: Robert Synnott

Robert Synnott — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:21:27 +0000

It wouldn’t make the link broker very happy, though, as it would defeat the whole point…

By: Pádraig Brady

Pádraig Brady — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:14:49 +0000

I played around with text link ads lately,
to see how they worked (ocaoimh.ie was getting
a nice price IIRC (over $100/link/month)).

Wouldn’t putting rel=”nofollow” in the links placate google?

By: Robert Synnott

Robert Synnott — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:19:27 +0000

Justice is done.

Seriously, though, possibly the biggest issue with those text link ads was that most users _didn’t know_ that they were an attempt to manipulate Pagerank; they thought that they were just conventional ads. The broker should have made it far clearer, and in particular should have mentioned that they were against Google’s policies.

I must admit that I considered using them at one point; they looked like very easy money for anyone who had a vaguely high-ranking site. Glad I didn’t now…

By: Donncha

Donncha — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:12:11 +0000

Robert – clear the cookies for ocaoimh.ie from your browser and go to any of my older posts. You’ll see the ads then. I’m honestly glad you never saw them however, that’s the way it’s supposed to be

Matt – thanks

Colin – yup, that’s right. You won’t have long to wait. I’m hoping to release it next week!