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/