Forum Moderators: martinibuster
You can put some code server side that inserts some links randomly on your site pages. 1000's of others do the same and your link appears at random on other peoples sites. Yahoo and msn pick the links up within a few days and then come the serps.
Really good because no reciprocals, 1000's of participants and kicks ass rankings with no effort. The only problem is that there you do not know where your links are going to appear and as the popularity increases so will the crap.
Otherwise, perhaps we should punish everyone with advertising on their site! Or maybe just sites with advertising that changes with page refreshes? That would be most commercial sites with banner ads or google ads or any such thing. Come on people.
What's your real gripe? That someone found a simple, cheap, effective way to generate traffic and backlinks? Please. It's the weighting system that gives such weight to backlinks that's the problem- not the advertisers.
Even if Google began actively checking if links disappear after a page refresh, and downgrading those as advertising links... so what? I still get TRAFFIC from my advertising efforts.
Transient links like this can be discounted if the SEs want... but punishing them would be foolish.
Also, why do the ads have to be categorized? What everyone has to realize that it's the search engines' jobs to find out what a page is about and show relevant search results. It is NOT their job to tell me what I can and can not put on my site. And whether I can or cannot show advertising. That's my business- as long as I'm not linking to any junk - x rated, casinos, prescription drugs, etc... then it's not Google's job to make me categorize my ads. Period.
It is NOT Google's job to protect YOU from advertising. You can choose not to visit that site. It is therefore not Google's job to make sure you only have to see relevant ads. Please! Let's not make Google the ad police of the web. Webmasters will benefit by showing relevant ads... but they don't have to.
Come on!
[edited by: eeve at 8:21 pm (utc) on Feb. 14, 2005]
Why? Affiliate links are relevant :). They are almost guaranteed to be because their location is motivated by money and the hope of a sale.
>>You mean as they appear on the publisher's pages, right? Seems to me that plain HTML links would be a lot harder to distinguish as being part of a link pool than not.
Not if they change with each refresh. Can you think of any other HTML links that rotate like that? I can, but that is spam too :)
Call it what you want. It's not advertising. I'm afraid you have your head where the sun does not shine if you cannot see it is gaming any SE which uses a link based algorithm. The advertising value of those links is nill.
If you want to compare it to penalties from the past think of the buying pagerank threads. "Surely it's only advertising?".
It will be the same people posting comments like this who are in the next update thread saying "Gee my site disappeared and it was pure white hat".
Please! It is an effective tool to show visitors a new ad each time they visit. It increases the chances of catching their eye. If backlinks are a fringe benefit... then this is a problem with the google algorithm, not with the actions of the website owners.
Banners are too commonplace to ban.
Heh heh, just wait until next time I meet my buddy GoogleGuy for lunch. You guys are goners :)
www.slashdot.com
www.hotmail.com
www.cnn.com
hmm... some big names in that group.
So is it just text ads that bother you? They are much less obtrusive than image ads. And who has the right to say what KIND of ads are ok?
Not if they change with each refresh. Can you think of any other HTML links that rotate like that? I can, but that is spam too :)
What I mean is: when you look at the link, is it a plain HTML link?
It's not advertising.
Sure it is. What's the difference between me joining CJ and getting webmasters to put up my link and joining a link pool and getting webmasters to put up my link?
Why? Because of the fringe benefit of search engine backlinks?
It is NOT the job of the search engines to tell me what kind of ads are ok and which are not.
This is especially important since text ads are LESS obtrusive to my visitors. A key point of website design is to design FOR visitors not for search spiders.
The ONLY concern is whether search engines should sandbox ALL temporary links or none.
Banners don't distort the Google results, but anchor text does. So Google will protect themselves whether you think it's fair or not.
Hughmungus - yes, it's a plain link. Plain as can be. No scripts at all.
>>Sure it is. What's the difference between me joining CJ and getting webmasters to put up my link and joining a link pool and getting webmasters to put up my link?
The difference is:
1) The webmasters from CJ will put a link on a relevant page because they want to make a sale. I don't think Google minds relevant links even if they are artificial.
2) Google probably would not bother indexing the affiliate link anyhow, so it would not have any beneficial effect on your site in the SERPS.
doesn't work like that. tons of affiliate programs out there have used http referrers.
oh, and the ad network isn't exclusively text links. you can advertise with banners as well.
No I think affiliate programs will not get penalized because the links are likely to be relevant and actually benefit google's attempt to determine which page is the most relevant.
As an example of why they allow some things to stand when they are clear manipulation: This is the only reason I can think of for why link swap links pages have not been banned. They add relevance because webmasters take the time to put a link in the right category. They benefit google's search for the meaning of a page.
Go and read the history of the program if you want to understand what it achieves (sticky me for the url), and yes it does benefit you in the serps- and the problem there is what?
There is nothing deceptive about it and the worst I see happening *if* for some odd reason it does, is that the impact on serps will be buffered by google.
But I have read what googleguy said about it and he basically said that as long as a site (publishing ads from the network) doesn't link via the network to junk sites... no drama. That can't happen unless we approve junk into the network.
I dis-approve up to 50% of ads sometimes for this very reason, who wants to link to junk! I also am quite taken back by some of the big names that do use the network.
Anyway - read the history, read the support forums if you want to understand what this program actually is and is not.
I think affiliate programs will not get penalized because the links are likely to be relevant and actually benefit google's attempt to determine which page is the most relevant.
So...then what's the difference between a web ring of sites that are relevant to each other and a link pool of sites that are relevant to each other and joining a directory full of links of sites that are relevant to each other?
I think the problem is that it's a new form of advertising and people just aren't used to the idea of it.
How is joining a text ad cooperative (where in exchange for putting others' ads on my site, they put put my text ad on their site) any different from a link pool?
It's kind of silly to judge intent when you judge an ad vs a link pool link -- in both cases, the webmaster who puts the link on his site wants more traffic because he wants more sales because he wants more money.
Banners are too commonplace to ban.
What about rotating text ads then? I have that on my site.
1 - There will be a short term benefit from the introduction of the new links, and I assume the link pool system is run broadly fairly (something that would be hard to know for sure).
2 - I think calling it advertising and arguing the case on here that it is advertising until you are blue in the face is rather missing the point. Whatever your intentions, and whatever the intentions of the people running the service, the question remains - If Google find it adversely affecting their results (which if it works, it will) then will they stand by and let that continue?
Surely the answer is no. I personally doubt they will take a scattergun approach to kicking out everyone involved (as mentioned previously, due to false positives) but they will attempt to degrade the value down to nothing for the incoming links. For outgoing links they will attempt to determine a pattern of links across an entire crawled site and if they feel you are offering these links out then they will be perfectly entitled to use that information to affect ranking.
I think the area people argue around is "I am just using this for advertising". Google has no real concern for your intention, nor any ability to infer it from your pages. It IS possible they will come to dislike this scheme and only they will decide on whether or not it is advertising or gaming the search engines.
Also, let's remember that people placing these links on their site will place them out of the way at the bottom of a sidebar or the bottom of the page. They will try as hard as possible to not display the links to their users as they might click on them, and cliking on them has no benefit to the site hosting the links. This smells much more like link "selling" (ok, bartering) to me than advertising on that basis alone - and for me, this is what distinguishes this from banner advertising which is a comparison used by many.
If you were forced to display the links prominently above the fold or some other criteria like that, then maybe they would "feel" more like advertising - but who honestly thinks that will happen?
Whatever your intentions, and whatever the intentions of the people running the service, the question remains - If Google find it adversely affecting their results (which if it works, it will) then will they stand by and let that continue?
it'd be great if it was that simple. it isn't, though: link exchanges and buying text links can adversely affect the SERPs. why hasn't google done anything about them?
false positive don't only spring up when you're issuing a penalty. if google employs something to negate or diminish the value of said links (but not "punish" the links), this would result in false positives as well.
the question then becomes, can it become automated in such a way that the link negation will have a positive impact on the SERPs, when the negations that are false positives are included?
that isn't such an easy question. why risk the false positives potential (and from there, an unintentional decrease in relevancy) to knock out an advertising program that's implimenting on a very, very, very small scale compared to all the sites in google's index?
we can say with confidence, though, that google certainly doesn't seem concerned enough with the network to do anything about it. it could be because of the complications that would arise from negating it (especially when measured against the net impact it's actually having). it could because they simply don't have a problem with it and don't find that it decrease relevancy. it could be a bit of A and a bit of B.
But when the time comes to fix it, it may prove to be a bit of a challenge - the code is server side, so for all intents and purposes the html blends just fine with page content. It changes every refresh, but if G starts targetting for that, the code can be easily tweaked so the links are semi permament.
My personal belief is because these links pages aid Google's categorization of pages. Webmasters usually put a link in a relevant category, and this actually increases relevancy. I noticed this when I crawled some sites' backlinks which were mainly links pages and found them to be right on the topic of the site being linked to.
I think calling it advertising and arguing the case on here that it is advertising until you are blue in the face is rather missing the point.
What's the difference between a link pool or link exchange and Amazon.com and eBay exchanging links with each other? It's advertising for both but neither has paid anything for it other than a reciprocal.
Whatever your intentions, and whatever the intentions of the people running the service, the question remains - If Google find it adversely affecting their results (which if it works, it will) then will they stand by and let that continue?
Define "adversely".
Anyone doing any sort of link exchanging work will (in their perspective) feel that putting a piece of code and getting automatic links an unfair advantage and remove any sort of 'editorial review' on the choice of links and detracts from the overall quality of the web. "I'm doing all this work and playing fair, when some punk comes in and joins these link pools and gets ranked higher than me". I can undertand how it may upset the current order of things...
define adversely
Well, my point really was that it wasn't for me to define, it was for google to do so if they wished. But, I would imagine if sites who were part of this scheme officialy for the sake of advertising, found that they were shooting up the rankings as a result, then google would feel that this was an adverse effect as it was manipulatable by webmasters beyond the content of their pages.
Again though, the questions are coming up asking me to make a distinction for you between sites that partner together to share customer base (e.g. ebay/amazon type tie-ups), banner advertising and this "new" method. For me it's the sniff test. It doesn't smell like advertising - if it is advertising then any push up the rankings would be an innocent by-product right?
You seem to want to argue it both ways, if it's advertising then frankly you shouldn't care whether Google pushs your rankings higher or not as a result. If it's for seach engines, then you need to consider how the seach engine itself might feel about it.
I'm not here to tell you you are "cheating" or that this is moreally, ethically or heaven forbid, criminally wrong. I'm just saying that IF it is succesful, then google will be being gamed on a very simple systemic basis and they will move to protect their one and only real product, search. No SE wants to be gamed, they want to determine as accurately as possible which sites represent what a searcher is looking for. They may well feel that this service helps on that basis, but put yourself in their shoes for a minute and decide whether you want to increase or decrease the ability for webmasters to push their own sites up the rankings?
Saying it is small kind of misses the point for me too. If it works (and I daresay it will) then it will explode in popularity and these schemes will be EVERYWHERE very quickly. If it doesn't work, then why would you care about being in it?
As for determining which sites are displaying the links, the very nature of the service and the resources available to Google would imply to me that it wouldn't be that hard to determine who to "hit" if you wanted to. Across a large site of say 10k page, with a number of links per page, spidered a number of times per month you build up a profile of sites linked to on that category. Do the same for another site and past a certain level of similarity you could ascertain that both were in the scheme. Across thousands of sites the chances of a false positive go down even further. I doubt they would attempt to penalise the sites being linked to for obvious reasons, but determining from linking patterns who was in and who was out, really shouldn't be that hard a process given the scale of this for most sites.
That would be fine. But then sites on your topic would be a smaller pool and there would not be enough backlinks to help you much.
Has this network managed to include any sites which have bypassed the sandboxs?
but if you put a new page up for almost any keyword you're targetting on a non-sandboxed domain, and throw a decent amount of weight at it, you can rank within days.
if you do the same on a sandboxed domain, allinanchor will rise, but the serps will generally stay about the same.
I've seen the Coop do wonders for some of the sites I've had running in it (That I thought were stuck in the sandbox - I could be wrong)...
I still don't understand why people have an issue with this... If you don't like it, don't use it - If you like it, then sign up :)
Cheers
Oliver
