It is against our terms and conditions to have a
rel="nofollow"on the [Text-Link-Ads] ads.
Let there be no more equivocation: Text-Link-Ads are black hat SEO sellers. They are a search engine influence broker.
Devil’s Advocate #1 says: “You’re just selling links… how is that different from Google Adsense or any other advertising?”
Response: You’re selling influence, through a link. Take away the influence (by nofollow), and you’ll find yourself getting a letter from Text-Link-Ads saying your account has been placed on hold. The influence is the important part. The delivery mechanism is irrelevant. Focusing on the mechanism is a red herring.
Devil’s Advocate #2 says: “Search engines are smart enough to tell the difference between sponsored links and regular links.”
Response: No they’re not. Text-Link-Ads is completely predicated on its ability to fool search engines. Otherwise, they’d let you nofollow the links. Also, they’d be paying you a lot less money.
Devil’s Advocate #3 says: “Search engines aren’t smart enough, but they should be! It’s not my fault that they’re not on their game.”
Response: I agree on both counts, but in the meantime you’re still knowingly polluting their search engine rankings with sponsored material. That’s black hat. Your day of reckoning is coming. Maybe you’ll be delisted. Maybe your PageRank will go down a few notches. Just know that you can’t shit on search engines and expect them to take it with a smile.
Devil’s Advocate #4 says: “It’s my site! I’ll do whatever I want!”
Response: I agree. And so do the search engines, which is why they’re trying to keep people like Text-Link-Ads from polluting their search results.
If you have another devil’s advocate (or maybe just devil) position that I haven’t addressed, let me know in the comments and I’ll update the post.
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.
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”.
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/
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! 😀
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?
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.
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. 🙂
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.