The missing textlink

The recent Page Rank updates and penalties for selling text links have left the market in a daze. What to Do? Well it looks like webmasters are having to make a choice, abide by Googles guidelines and use links that are not followed by Googlebot or go underground to sell links.

I like my Google traffic

Those that have decided to capitulate have done so not because they necessarily agree with Googles stance but because the value of the traffic big G sends them. In short if you are caught selling text links without a nofollow then you will lose pagerank and possibly traffic.

One of the larger web properties was recently hit by the Google penalty and have decided to comply. Scroll to the end of the post to read their final letter of surrender.

I’m going underground to sell links

No, not me personally but there are those that have decided that they want to have their cake and eat it. There is an interesting post at blogging tips regarding underground links.

The Pagerank still and traffic carrot

Google whilst not publicising what they are doing have fired a warning shot to publishers about selling links. If you sell text links and do not make it obvious by using a nofollow or javascript then you will lose pagerank. By reducing your pagerank your links become less appealing for webmasters buying pagerank links.

I have had my best blog which I have worked hard on for over two years go from a PR6 to PR3 for selling text links. Guess what most of the advertisers were only interested in the links for there PR. Eventually selling PR links will be done by a minority on the black market where they will fetch a premium because of there scarcity.

The text link market evolves

As well as the private text link sales the text link brokers are also evolving. TNX which I have talked about previously are one such company, Earners blog talks about this and how they are making their links harder for google to spot. I reported this and said it was like a red rag to the Google bull. So what are publishers to think. It’s hardly fair that some can get away with selling premium links whilst the rest of us that comply have to sell links at a discount.

My stance at TextAdSearch

As yet this blog does not sell advertsing. I will however be introducing some ad space. I will also be using nofollow tags on those ads. There are several reasons for this. Firstly I don’t want to have to constantly worry about if Google will find out. Secondly it will give me a chance to gauge the new text link market and experiment a bit more with OpenAds.