Are selling text links a thing of the past?
It now appears that Google are taking even more steps to penalize those who sell text links on their website. Blogging Tips logo creator David Airey recently had his blog penalised and it’s something I think all bloggers need to pay attention to as it seems to becoming more and more common.
Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land posted an article yesterday entitled ‘Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google‘ (found via Jim Kukral). The article focuses on some popular sites losing their PageRank recently, notably The Stanford Daily which has dropped from a PR of 9 to 7 in just a few months.
What does this mean? Well in a nutshell, if Google decides to penalise those who sell text links then you will be faced with the following choice : Either you add the nofollow tag to advertisers links or you greatly increase the huge risk in being penalized by Google. A google penalty means that your search results will be pushed back about 50 placings. For example, currently BloggingTips is number 1 on Google for the search term ‘Blogging Tips’ but if we suffered a penalty we would be on page 5 or 6 for that term.
Daniel Scocco today posted that there will be no more text link ads and unfortunately I have to agree with him. It would be too much of a risk to place links of this kind on your blog. I’m sure TLA would still be around in some shape or form but obviously they will have to change what is essentially the basis of their whole system. A big part of my income comes from TLA through some other sites I own so this is quite a blow for me personally. There are a lot of blogs and a lot of websites whose main source of income is from selling text links and I think if Google keeps going the route it’s going those sites are going to suffer.
The question is, will you be able to sell text links on your blog at the same rate if the nofollow tag is attached to all links?
Articles mentioned in this post and related to this topic
Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google - Search Engine Land
Google Flexes On Page Rank Debate Once Again - Jim Kukral
No More Text Link Ads? - Daily Blog Tips
Dancing With The Gevil - Defamed By Google? - Andy Beard
Jim Kukral | October 8th, 2007 at 11:00 am #
Would you still buy a text link ad if they had nofollow put in them?
Can you fix my name to be kukral :)?
Kevin | October 8th, 2007 at 11:16 am #
I would still buy a link if it had a nofollow tag but only if it was placed in a prominent position which would get a lot of hits. Of course, with the seo benefit gone I would not be willing to pay as much.
(name changed
)
Thilak | October 8th, 2007 at 12:25 pm #
Well, Google should consider working on an algorithm to stop the flow of PR to these sponsored links rather than devaluing the page rank of the site which shows sponsored links.
How about acquiring TLA?
Tejvan Pettinger | October 8th, 2007 at 1:32 pm #
But banner ads are OK I guess?
Kevin | October 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm #
Tejvan - Banner ads should be ok. The problem is that people were using the anchor text in text links to boost their search rankings.
Andy | October 8th, 2007 at 2:26 pm #
What happens Google says something like, “in order for you to be listed in our directory you have to have this code on your website and you have to display one of out AdWord Advertisers?”
I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Google is positioning themselves to control more and more information. No that there is anything wrong with how they are doing things to date. They have every right, after all they are a “for profit” company. It just reminds me of gun control or anything else that opponents chip away at. If you tear down a building, people miss it more. If you dismantle it brick-by-brick the demolition goes un-noticed until it is past the point of no return. Doesn’t Google have over 60% of the searches now? What happens when they have 95% of the searches? If that happens, you then have the potential for G to be a big neighborhood bully. I guess I’m just asking - What’s the next thing that Google isn’t going to like or what they are going to make you do to avoid the penalty box.
Shawn | October 8th, 2007 at 3:06 pm #
This will definitley change the landscape of money making for many many bloggers.
Dean | October 8th, 2007 at 3:57 pm #
So it sounds like banner ads containing javascript are OK then?
Also, any idea about affiliate links? are they considered paid links too?
Kevin | October 8th, 2007 at 6:01 pm #
Dean - non javascript affiliate links should be treated the same as bought paid links.
Cash Quests | October 8th, 2007 at 7:23 pm #
Not worried at all. I price my links based on the traffic you’ll get and I barely get any traffic from Google myself. Google barely even registers in my monetization plans - if they did - how would I make money if they blacklisted me? Not worth the risk to rely on them.
Myo Kyaw Htun | October 8th, 2007 at 8:47 pm #
Google pushed ‘Text Link Ads’ away from Google Search result already.
http://www.myokyawhtun.com/2007/10/04/google-penalizes-text-link-ads.html/
All of we guys who sell links will be next.
David Airey | October 9th, 2007 at 2:31 am #
Hi Kevin,
Seems I’m one of the luckier ones who managed to reverse a Google penalty. I doubt it’d be the same for a blog with less traffic / exposure - one that didn’t make the front page of Sphinn where Matt Cutts sometimes reads.
Still, it’s a lesson for us all about what you value more - traffic from Google searches or a few paid links? For me it’s certainly the former.
Ndaru | October 24th, 2007 at 6:16 am #
This sure leads to paranoia. I mean how in the world the Big G is going to tell the difference between paid and natural links? My site’s PR has been demoted from PR6 to PR4. I swear, I only link to relevant (yes, really) sites and never to dubious sites with titles like ‘viagra’, ‘xxx’ or ‘online casinos’.
If we’re not allowed to link to related sites (that’s the whole idea about linking, right?) then what? Are we from now on going to put nofollow tag on every external link?