Banner Exchange Programs -- Good, Bad, Neither?

Please share your knowledge and experience

[newtoseo]

We recently began participating in a banner exchange program. The exchange is specific to our industry. It's one of those exchanges based on number of impressions. The more impressions we show, the more our banner gets shown on other sites particpating in the program.

I'm sure you are familiar with how these work -- code is placed on pages on our site. Then random banners from the program are rotated on our site (based on categories we selected to have shown).

Is this something that could be seen negatively by Google? We thought it was perfectly legit, but now after spending some time on this forum I'm having second thoughts (actually I'm beginning to second guess everything we do!) The banner exchange company has a high PR7. So, seem to be in good graces w/ Google.

Appreciate feedback.

[Yidaki]

newtoseo, that's perfectly safe as long as it's not a link exchange - as long as there's no direct link to the participating sites but a ad script instead. These are normally disallowed through robots.txt and not set up to pass pr.

[newtoseo]

Thanks so much for replying. Please excuse my ignorance, but how do I know for sure that it is using ad script? And, what exactly does "These are normally disallowed through robots.txt and not set up to pass pr." mean?

Appreciate your additional explanations so I can either ease my concerns or take action if I need to get out of this exchange.

[Yidaki]

newtoseo, the robots.txt thing is explained at Google's webmasters FAQ [google.com].

After reading there, you should look what's the exact url that is linked to from the exchange banners. Now, look at the robots.txt of the url's domain to see if the click url has been disallowed. You'll understand what this means after you read the above faq's.

[newtoseo]

Yidaki-

Help. I'm still not understanding. I read through the FAQs but still couldn't find information to understand what you were explaining.

Let me try to explain what I found... Let's just call the banner exchange program I'm in banner.com.

The hyperlink for the banner that is placed on our site as part of the program starts with this address: [banner.com...] blah, blah, blah (even though the banner is advertising a different website and naturally when you click on the banner you are taken to that website.)

Let's say the actual website of the banner on our site is greatwidgets.com

You had said "as long as there's no direct link to the participating sites but a ad script instead." So, I'm assuming that since the hyperlink address begins with banner.com instead of with greatwidgets.com, then this would be considered okay. (?)

I tried to look at the robots.txt, but couldn't find it. Can you tell me specifically how I view that information?

Thanks again!

[Yidaki]

newtoseo, to make it short and simple: normally a real banner exchange doesn't hurt your site. If it's even a large advertising network, google most likely will ignore the link anyway. However, stay away from *link* exchanges that are meant to manipulate a site's pr - but that's a different thing than a *banner* xchange.

You check the robots.txt by looking at this url:
[yourbannerexample.com...]

Anyways, i feel that you have some things to learn, so be happy, you've found the right place to learn quite everything about webmastering here at WebmasterWorld. Just browse through the different forums here, do a site search for specific things and read, read, read first.

btw: welcome at WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]. ;)