Text Link Ads - Are They A Thing Of The Past?
…there has been much talk of Google clamping down on the validity of buying links…they want their search results to be based on genuine credit….
One of the desires of every website owner, is to build up links to their site. For the most part, there are four ways to do this:
- Place your site in directories
- Swap links with other webmasters
- Write great articles that others will want to link to
- Buy links as part of your marketing campaign
The latter has become increasingly popular, especially since the inception of Text Link Ads, which has become one of the most popular ways to monetize a website, bringing in a steady stream of decent income for high traffic sites. In fact, some charge over $200/month for one site wide link.The reason TLA have become so popular is for their two-fold benefit. i) You get a one-way link to your site, coming from (possibly) a high Page Rank site, which helps to build your own authority in the search engines, ii) and you get click-thru traffic. The benefits from one site on it’s own would be marginal, but if one was to invest in buying links from 20-50 good websites, the benefits could be very high indeed.
Google - Iron Dictatorship
However, recently there has been much talk of Google clamping down on the validity of buying links. Their argument is, they want their search results to be based on genuine credit. In other words, a site should only be linked to if it’s worthwhile; buying links allows useless sites to gain a lot of credibility they don’t deserve, if they’re only willing to pay out money for the links. You can see Google’s point, but it has caused quite a stir for obvious reasons.
But how are Google going to know the difference between paid links, and genuine ‘link love’, where a site earns a link because it’s good? Apparently Google are in the process of using three techniques in order to identify purchased links:
- They look for obvious patterns, such as “Advertisers” or “Sponsors” near the link, and the grouping of unrelated links that don’t fit the topic matter of the page where the links are found.
- They have thousands of editors in Asia, and their job is to review search results in a ‘Quality Assurance’ manner. Part of the job is to ascertain links that have been purchased, and flag them.
- They accept reports of purchased links, and such may be reviewed by their teams in Asia.
So what do Google do when they find a purchased link? They flag it, and make it ineffective in it’s power to benefit search results. Also, if they perceive flagrant link buying for ranking purposes, they apparently can, and do, ban sites.
So what to do?
Whether you want to accept this or not, this is a present reality, so what action (if any), should one be taking? Well, to be honest, Text Link Ads are an avenue of monetizing that I may want to take this site down in the future, and there are two things I will be doing if that’s the case.
- I wouldn’t use words like “Advertisers” or “Sponsors” over the links. Instead, I would suggest “Related Links”, or “Supporting Friends” in order to combat the automatic ignoring of any Google algorithm that might detect paid links that way. Use your imagination, you can probably come up with something better than I have, but whatever you do, don’t lie. Don’t say “Blogroll” or the like.
- I would make sure the links are genuinely related to your own content. In fact, this should go without saying anyway. What good are unrelated advertising links to your visitors anyway?
Thoughts
I can see Google’s reasoning behind these efforts, and it’s frustrating to think that spammy sites might earn more credibility in searches than genuine sites, just because they pumped money into buying a heap of links. However, I believe there is a place for bought links, as long as they’re related, and are not spammy.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Google are going too far?
- If you enjoyed this, you should read:
Comments
8 Responses to “Text Link Ads - Are They A Thing Of The Past?”
Share your thoughts...
I think Google need to tread very carefully over this: Companies like TLA etc. have built up their businesses based upon SERPs working in a particular way.
If Google decide to attack paid links in this way, and put these companies out of business overnight I wonder what sort of legal challenge could be mounted over this by the aggrieved parties? Sure, Google can argue that ‘other search engines are available’ and they can sort results how they like, but given their self-engineered dominance over the market, I’m not sure how far that argument would wash.
Who asked Google to police the internet anyway? I’d rather they were more proactive at suspending Sploggers adsense accounts, rather than forcing the blogger being scraped to jump through 20 hoops in order to protect their content-adsense fuels more spam and content theft than anything else out there.
I use TLA on my site and head the small section of three links with ‘featured sites’.
I only show related links and they’re currently:
Printing services
Discount post card printing
Branding
Pretty relevant to my site categories. I agree that you shouldn’t allow the placement of unrelevant links as this will only affect your reputation.
If money wasn’t a worry I’d never use advertising, but alas those bills don’t stop.
Google watching makes interesting sport these days. In my opinion, they may be taking their “Don’t be evil” mantra a little too far with some of these recent decisions. Let’s face it. Because of their dominance they are in a position to turn that around and say “Don’t let anyone else be evil either” and they can be very liberal in how they define evil. Is buying a few links really evil? Don’t they have more important things to do like ridding the world of malware and preaching the benefits of universal search? Maybe scanning the contents of every book ever written? How about Google Moon to go alongside Google Earth? C’mon Google, focus!
Relevant sponsoring links are certainly not an inherently bad thing (they can often provide readers with information they want), but the abuse of purchased links has tainted the reliability of such links in producing a good search result. After all, Google is not responsible for rewarding SEO. It is responsible for returning relevant, high-quality results to searchers.
Besides, even if you feel such linking practices shouldn’t be “punished”, it seems to me they should receive considerably less ranking weight than earned links. Doesn’t Google’s algorithm need to differentiate between paid and unpaid links to rank link value? Isn’t this ranking a good thing for searchers and for those of us producing quality content people will choose to link to?
I am a rookie at this, so please let me know if I am way off base.
Chris - True words my friend, but imagine trying to bring Google to court because of how they rank their results. I’m not sure that would work. As much as we hate to admit it, they have a monopoly position.
David - Even if you didn’t really need the money, I see no problem with tactical, unobtrusive advertising, but definately keep it related.
Patrick - Agreed! The problem is, those “more important things” don’t bring in the big bucks for Google. They have to protect their precious multi-billion dollar revenue as much as possible.
Culinary institute of america….
Culinary institute. New england culinary institute gpa requirements. Culinary institute greystone napa. Pennsylvania culinary institute. Auburn culinary institute. Culinary institute of america….
I hope this is not the end of Google Ads. Youngsters everywhere can improve the publicity of something that’s very good but has poor advertising, earning an extra coin. It helps the firms to compete one another when it comes to advertising and customers. Google Ads should remain ! PS: People making money from Google Ads get their money with no fee balance transfers. Can you believe it ?
Здорово!