3Genius (follow-up on "Search Engine Spam?")
[Tim is on the road and asked me to post a note about this.]
In Tim's "Search Engine Spam?" post, he wrote:
Many of the text ads on our sites are placed by a company called 3Genius, but many of them come from individual advertisers via our normal ad sales process. Our ad team apparently restricted the range of possible links to travel sites (which seemed plausibly relevant) and a couple of other areas, though affiliate sites such as Osdir.com, servlets.com, and linuxquestions.org, which are O'Reilly branded but which we do not own, have less restrictive policies, which is why you will see ads for cuban cigars or Jack Daniels on osdir.com.
The people at 3Genius, the only company specifically mentioned in the post, asked us to make clear that they run hotel and travel sites, but they do not run any of the other ads mentioned in the post (like the cigar and alcohol sites). They also pointed out that Nat linked to one of their sites in a recent Radar post, citing it as a cool use of Ajax. (Nat didn't know the site was run by one of our advertisers when he linked to it.) One of the people from 3Genius also posted a long comment on Tim's post, which is worth reading if you're interested in the issue.
I realize their are strong opinions on all sides of this debate (certainly including mine), and for some people the nature of the sites is less important than the nature of the links. I do think it's fair, though, for this company to be clear about which business they are in -- travel sites -- and which businesses they're not in.
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Hey, Chad,
I think a lot of people are looking at this from the point of view of the technical problem. From that perspective, of course nofollow is the right answer.
From the point of view of the advertiser, though, just adding something to the HTML might ignore a discussion it would be better to have much more directly. For some advertisers, adding nofollow and removing the ads altogether might have exactly the same effect. I would much rather sit down with our advertisers and talk with them about our perspective on these ads, than simply add an HTML attribute and not talk with them.
What I see in Tim's post is a clear statement that we're making sure the ads that draft on our PageRanks will stop doing this as quickly as possible. I think that is in effect the same result for which you're advocating, but implemented through discussion with the advertiser rather than through HTML.
There are many resources available when considering where to advertise
Virtually all popular resources have high PageRanks (they ARE popular - so they are linked to..duh)
When deciding which of the Thousands of potential Advertising options to use - it is perfectly appropriate to weigh ALL the R.O.I. factors that each has to offer, then go with those that are the most productive for you
THESE ADVERTISERS ARE VITAL IN KEEPING THIS WEBSITE:
Updated with Breaking News versus Second Hand
Free versus Subcription Model
High Quality versus Mediocre
THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT THEM!!
In other words - the more R.O.I. an advertiser offers - the likely a prospect is to do business with you.
The Intelligence plus the Education level of your Readership (there is an Income correlation)PLUS the benefits of your PageRank helped you over thousands of potential alternatives!
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH HAVING THEM ONBOARD
Why is it a problem to buy high pr links? Only selling links based on pr is considered "unethical".
There are millions of web sites, but there are only a few pr 8's.
Basically because people like having search results that aren't polluted. So if someone is having their pr boosted for the term 'hotel' from O'Reilly (or whoever), its just a bit of an annoyance.
PR can be easily gained from one good link.. which doesn't mean its popularity...
Orlando,
You are buying links like there is no tomorrow.
I wish you would slow down. Your rankings are improving, but how long will they last with Google on your tail?
Dave
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Chad [08.25.05 08:40 PM]
So then why not just add a simple rel="nofollow" to these paid links? That would ensure that the advertisers are only buying attention from your readers, and aren't using the O'Reilly network to increase their pagerank on Google and the other search engines. This is really a simple solution to this problem.