h0bbel.p0ggel.org

As mentioned before I decided to drop Text Link Ads when they told me that my nofollow modification to their Wordpress plugin was in violation of their ToS and that my account would be suspended if I didn't comply.

Yesteday I got a new email from them, again explaining that my ads wasn't showing at they would have to suspend my account unless I re-instated them. Clearly communications internally in Text Link Ads hasn't gone the full circle and the second representative that contacted me was unaware of the earlier conversations.

I took this opportunity to, yet again, ask for the ToS that I'm in violation of and got a Word document in return. After asking yet again, I did get a link from them to the ToS. The document is only linked to on the signup page and it's not possible to find a link to it after you have registered. Why they make it so hard to review after you sign up is beyond me, but I guess we can all speculate.

Either way, the Text Link Ads Terms of Service document does have an URL, it's just not well linked to anywhere, but here it is Text Link Ads Client / Publisher / Affiliate Agreement

And yes, I was clearly in violation of it after I did my changes to the plugin, I just had no way of finding out before I decided to "hack" the code.

9. EXCLUSIVITY PROVISIONS. A. The publisher is not permitted to alter the ad script provided by the Company in any way without written consent from Text Link Ads while delivering the advertisements. ...

So there it is. No modifications are allowed.

Some time ago, I decided to add the "nofollow" tag to the link ads I had running from Text Link Ads. Why, you might ask? Well, I had a hunch that something might be happening with regards to how Google treats sites that sell text based links for PageRank. As I really don't want to play with my relationship with Google, adding a simple nofollow to the links would then indicate to the mighty GoogleBot that I don't want to transfer any PageRank to the advertisers.

I'm not the first one to do this, Ryan Jones over at dotcult.com did the exact same thing back in January, and got suspended from TLA (only to be let back in later). Like Ryan, I looked for a ToS on the TLA site, but could not find one. I therefore modified the raw PHP plugin that they provide, to add the nofollow tag.

Everything seemed fine, until I got an email from TLA a couple of days ago stating that my account has been suspended due to the modifications I had made. My reply was to send them the link to Ryan Jones' post, and asking them to show me the ToS I was violating. The reply was:

But Christian, please know, if you don't remove the nofollow, we will be forced to remove the advertisers and refund them their payments. This is not up for discussion, you must remove the nofollow.

And I have yet to see any ToS that forbids me from doing what I did, and the representative from TLA (which I talked to on IRC), then came up with this little gem:

I spoke to patrick on the matter already and he said publishers are not allowed to use nofollow, there's no way to validate what that guy said actually came from patrick

Who should I believe? Some random blog posting, or the company that makes a living by cheating the Google rankings. For me the choice was easy in the end;
TLA has proved to me that they sell text based ads purely for PageRank and nothing else. Text Link Ads actually say it on their own front page:

Improve your traffic and search engine rankings. Only TLA can deliver an ad that does both.

That is clearly something Google will penalize at some point, probably sooner rather than later. So, as far as TLA is concerned they are now officially removed from my site, and my TLA account has been suspended. I have no intention of removing my nofollow and helping TLA game the search engines for money.

Rumour has it that Google will start penalizing sites that do sell links like this, and I'm sure Matt Cutts "Whitehat SEO Tips for Bloggers" session at WordCamp 2007 will be really interesting in this regard. My guess is that sites that sell text ads for PageRank will lose the ability to enhance other sites PageRank. I might be wrong, but lets see what happens.

Other postings on the same, or related matters:

• Thor Schrock: Give Give or Sell Links on Your Blog? Google WILL Stop You…
• Garry Conn: It’s Google’s Way or The Highway
• Matt Cutts: Text links and Pagerank
• John Chow: http://www.johnchow.com/live-by-the-google-die-by-the-google/

Conclusion

My conclusion is easy: If it comes down to a TLA vs Google battle, Google wins. Hands down. There is no way I and jeopardizing my Google ratings for some easy monthly pay, even though the money TLA provided was pretty good. TLA tries to manipulate search engine rankings, and I'm pretty sure it won't be long until they and/or their users will be penalized for it. For all I know, it might already be happening.

As mentioned a few days ago, I got an offer via reviewme.com and I had some ethical concerns regarding it. Basically I decided I would give it a try, and then see how I felt when I was done.

This never happened though, as it turned out that the buyers of the review wanted me to review a physical product, not a website. This meant that the product would have to be shipped to me, from the US to Norway, which pretty much makes it impossible for me to complete the review in the stipulated 48h. I contacted reviewme about this, and got the following reply:

Our system can't support reviews of actual products -- it is designed so that bloggers can review websites, designs and content.

I did, however, get contacted directly by the people that wanted a review and subsequently made a deal with them. I said no to the payment, but agreed to review the product if I got a copy. So, at least I'm home free regarding payment for reviews and I really don't think that I will take up any offers through reviewme again.

The thought process this has stimulated made me realize that I really shouldn't get paid for reviews, but if I were to review a product I should at least get a copy of the product to play with. Reviewing products I haven't tested would make no sense after all.

A while back I signed up for reviewme.com, a "service" aimed at advertisers that want to get site owners to review their products for a price. Unlike others, reviewme has a full disclosure policy so that it's all out in the open. You don't even have to endorse the product, you are supposed to get paid even if you are highly critical of the product/site you are being paid to review. Reviewme then forwards 50% of the payment to the site owner that wrote the review, and everyone walks away happy.

Or do they? I hadn't really given this much thought until I got an email today stating that someone was interested in having me write a review for a product related to virtualization topics.

Sure, I could review the product at hand and get an easy payment, but thats where my qualms begin. How would being paid influence my review? I would not consciously let it have any bearing at all, but how could anyone reading it be sure that I'm not just singing the praise of the advertiser?

In this particular case, it's a product I would very much like to see as well as try out, but the payment bit is putting me off somewhat.

I'm not a purist that want to keep advertising and monetizing of sites like mine off the internet, in fact I have both Google Adsense and Text Link Ads in my sidebar and other places, and yes I do make the occasional $$ of my site. That doesn't directly influence what I write about though, it's just an added bonus that helps feed my increasing photography equipment habit.

So, what do you think? Should I do this initial review and see where it leads and possibly hurt the little integrity I might have, or should I stay put on my high horse and "just say no"

At the time of writing I have 29.9h left to decide if I should do this or not (and no, this is not a paid review of reviewme.com).