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.
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.
The Gallery team has posted an updated ideas page for the Google Summer of Code 2007 as welll as a call for more applications. I am sure lots of you out there have great ideas on how to improve Gallery 2, and now would be the perfect time to help the Gallery team to improving the product, AND get paid for it!
Google has extended the student application deadline to 5:00 PM PDT on Monday, March 26, 2007, so if you are eligible get cranking on your application and submit it. Help is make Gallery even better than it is already!
is on, and the mentoring organizations has now been selected. Gallery pleased to be amongst the accepted organizations this year too, along side a list of fine Open Source projects.
Get cranking on those student applications, it's a great way to earn some extra cash over the summer as well as a excellent way to get started with Open Source application development and culture.
It looks pretty much the same as the old Picasa 2 application,. but has a few new tricks up it's sleeve:
The web application is the slick, nearly minimalistic look you come to expect from Google. So far it's very responsive and the performance seems great. The ability to download an album directly into Picasa 2 from someone who has shared their photos seems like a good idea. You get 250MB storage space for free, and can purchase 6 gigabytes of additional storage for $25 a year.
Looks like this could become a realflickr contender. Lets hope it stays as snappy as it is now though, and don't get bogged down and sluggish like flickr is.
Now, who's going to create a Gallery 2 module that deals with Picasa Web Albums? Perhaps a RSS module for Gallery 2 could read albums from Picasa Web albums and display photos stored there as items in a Gallery 2 album? At least that sounds possible now, until Google (hopefully) releases an API that can be accessed directly.
I'm sure a lot of people want to add the new Google Analytics website tracker to their Gallery 2 installs. It's a pretty straight forward edition to make, but I'll outline it here.
1. Copy /gallery2/themes/matrix/templates/theme.tpl into a new directory under templates/ called local. The new copy should now reside in /gallery2/themes/matrix/templates/local/theme.tpl This makes Gallery 2 use the copy in templates/local/instead of the default one in templates/ and doing this ensures that any changes you have made will survive an update (either via a new Gallery 2 release or a cvs update). 2. Find the following:
{* Include this theme's style sheet *}
3. Insert the Google Analytics javascript somewhere between and like this:
{* Include this theme's style sheet *}
4. Remember to change the _uacct = "UA-xxxxx-x"; to your actual Analytics tracker ID. 5. Watch Google Analyzer give you statistics nirvana
