Comments on: Text-Link-Ads: Black Hat

By: Nina

Nina — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:04:38 +0000

I dropped TLA a while ago. I was going to take down my site for a few weeks and I wanted to make sure no one was paying to advertise on a site that wasn’t there.

So I logged on and started to look for some way to delete my account. I couldn’t figure it out. In fact, I still can’t; I just mailed them to let them know I no longer wished to work with them and a few days later they mailed back saying my site had been removed from their list.

My account is still active, though, and I still get (extremely annoying) e-mails from them.

Reading this post makes me feel guilty for ever having their ads on my site.

By: The Grey Area « Mark on WordPress

The Grey Area « Mark on WordPress — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:40:12 +0000

[...] search engine spamming schemes. Search engine spamming isn’t a grey area — it’s a black area. Duncan tries to lump all money-making activities that leverage Open Source software into a grey [...]

By: Christian Mohn

Christian Mohn — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:42:36 +0000

I didn’t see this posting until now, but have a look at http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/2007/07/22/dropping-text-link-ads/
and http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/2007/08/06/dropping-text-link-ads-a-followup/

Same experience, same result.

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:48:36 +0000

Chria,

I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess that both things are a factor. With a boatload of links to really bad sites, you might get your site delisted. With just one “grey” link, you may just get a slight hit to your page rank.

By: Chria

Chria — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:54:19 +0000

Argh, Ive just suggested trying Text Link Ads to a colleague of mine working on a commercial site, based on the number of people Ive seen using them recently.

Ummmm. Ooops. :/

I’m wondering… Would keeping the number of links to a minimum reduce the risk of your site being flagged by Google? Or is it more down to who you’re linking to?

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:37:50 +0000

Welcome to the light side, JaredB.

Alex, I checked out WP Text Ads… pretty slick, and probably a good option for high traffic sites that have enough clout to sell their own text ads. Of course it’d be even better if it were GPL!

By: Alex Choo

Alex Choo — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:54:34 +0000

Mark,

You’re spot on in your view that links without nofollow will influence SERP. Google’s unhappy with such links because it compromises PageRank.

I think nofollow is critical if a paid ads program is to be seen as legitimate. That’s why WP Text Ads has nofollow turned on by default.

http://www.wptextads.com/blog/2007/05/17/does-google-hate-paid-links-not-really-says-matt-cutts/

By: FreePress Blog » Blog Archive » More TLA trouble

FreePress Blog » Blog Archive » More TLA trouble — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:54:40 +0000

[...] developer Mark Jaquith recently posted his thoughts on the Text Link Ads issue, and I’m inclined to agree with [...]

By: JaredB

JaredB — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:33:06 +0000

Thanks for laying it out there so clearly. After some of the discussions on this topic at WordCamp, I went home and decided to dump TLA, largely because of the reasons you list here.

Interestingly enough, when I informed them that I was canceling my account, I actually got an e-mail reply from a TLA rep that used your justification #3 above, nearly word for word, as well as trying to reassure me that it would be too difficult for Google to “catch” me. I explained that while I wouldn’t underestimate Google’s ability to eventually track down this kind of thing, that the main point was that I didn’t want to do it any more, regardless of whether I could “get away with it”.

By: Chris Scott

Chris Scott — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:38:55 +0000

How about: buying and selling links will happen, TLA just makes the process a bit more transparent and efficient.

Not saying it is valid or good Disclaimer: I use TLA on one of my blogs.