Decision about text link ads

by Sapphire (November 25, 2007)

I finally realized this week why text link ads suck: because a certain search engine trashed them.

Once upon a time, before anything like the search engines we know now existed, text links were how you let people know of other relevant sites. It was a system that kind of policed itself: you put up a link that’s not very relevant because either (a) you were paid, or (b) you have no sense of what’s relevant. I click it and think, “That was a waste of my time.” After that I’m less likely to click your links. If people are buying links from you, they notice they’re not getting many hits from them and stop buying.

Enter the SE Who Must Not Be Named. They came along and decided, sensibly, to make linkage the basis of their SERPs. Only they went a step further and created PageRank, which was supposed to replace the research webmasters had previously done to determine who they wanted to buy ads (or any sort) from. This was done to sell AdWords, nothing more. AdSense ads don’t pass pagerank. If only everyone monetized exclusively with AdSense, the SE was sure its PageRank would work.

But we didn’t. Some of us just don’t like AdSense. Others went a step further and figured out that passing PageRank was more valuable than regular advertising, because you got both the hits and the rise in SERPs.

Oops.

Some companies, faced with a backfire like this, would say, “Oh, shit. Perhaps we should reevaluate our strategies”. But power corrupts, and The SE… oh, let’s call them the Corleone family felt everyone else should have to change, not them. Not even the rise of the “Paid to Read” industry, in which impoverished, frequently homebound people click ads in emails for portions of pennies to enrich webmasters (who rarely actually pay them) with fake AdSense clicks, thus damaging both AdWords advertisers and usually resulting in clickers not getting paid since the webmasters could hardly incur the wrath of the law over a few hundred bucks here and there, gave the Corleones pause to reconsider what they’d created.

Their system was perfect; it was everyone else who was mucking it up. Greedy webmasters, figuring out the algorithm and optimizing their sites accordingly. How dare they, you know, do what people in business do!

At the end of the day, text link ads should be fine. They should develop or lose their credibility with visitors the same way other links do. There is absolutely not one damn thing inherently wrong with text ads. But in practical terms, they’ve been destroyed for now by the actions of one company who thought only they were allowed to try to figure out someone else’s game and how to get the most out of it for yourself.

I never thought of selling text ads as “selling pagerank” because I was doing it before pagerank existed. But I realize now that at least some of the people buying links from me perhaps are just after pagerank (interestingly, since I zeroed out here, I haven’t lost a single paid text link). For this reason, I’m going to be moving away from pagerank-passing text links and toward javascripted text ads (AdBrite) which cannot possibly pass anything but what text link ads offered before pagerank: hits and visibility.

I’m not doing this because I’ve been scared off by the Corleones, nor in hopes of getting “my” PR back - it was alway “their” pagerank to award as they see fit and they’re welcome to it. I won’t be removing any text link ads at this point - ironically, this is because my pagerank was zeroed, and therefore any text link advertisers who stick with me must have reasons other than pagerank to do it. It’ll be interesting to see.

But either way, from now on I’ll be reluctant to engage in forms of advertisement or webmastering that are in any way connected to the Corleones or theories on how to optimize a site for them. I also will be do-following all of my Wordpress blogs, because (a) no-follow was the Corleone response to dealing with the spam they’d supposedly made useful, (b) all my good commenters deserve link love and (c) I’ve had several blogs do-followed for months now, and it hasn’t increased my spam in the slightest.

It’s kind of funny how so many of the stories around the web suggest that gee, pagerank isn’t everyone’s number one motivation for everything they do online. Every site zeroed out should have instantly lost all its text link advertisers. Do-following should increase spam. Like I said: interesting to see.

Posted in SEO
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