SEO, eCommerce, & Blogging

Have you ever wondered if Text-Link-Ads would prevent you from adding a NoFollow tag to their links? I did, until I received the answer from Text-Link-Ads today.

I never expected that Text-Link-Ads would admit that its business model is centered on selling a site’s pagerank to link buyers.

That is, I presumed Text-Link-Ads would at least try to maintain the image that its service merely provides links. I didn’t think Text-Link-Ads would admit to selling pagerank.

But if Text-Link-Ads prohibits websites from using the NoFollow tag on its links, then Text-Link-Ads is admitting that at least part of what it sells to link buyers is pagerank.

Here is what happened. Last week, one of my websites changed from a pagerank 5 to pagerank 3. I wondered if my Text-Link-Ads plugin was the cause, since rumors indicate that Google has been decreasing pagerank on sites that sell links.

I thought about removing Text-Link-Ads from my site, but they earn about $100 per month.

Next, I thought about adding the NoFollow tag to links from Text-Link-Ads so Google would remove its penalty from my site.

But before I added NoFollow to the block used by Text-Link-Ads, I figured I should ask Text-Link-Ads about it. So using their online contact form, I sent them my question. Today I received a response from Text-Link-Ads:

From: Tech Support - Text Link Ads - techsupport@text-link-ads.com
Date: Oct 31, 2007 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Text Link Ads Inc. Online Contact Form - Publisher Technical Support
To: (EMAIL OMITTED)

(NAME OMITTED),

Yes it is. You may not use nofollow.

Jonathan (LAST NAME OMITTED)
Product Manager
Text-Link-Ads
a MediaWhiz Holdings, Inc. Company
Tel: (PHONE OMITTED)
Fax: 646-417-5084

ad{net} | Coregistrations.com | Filinet.com | MediaWhiz Search | Monetizeit | Text-Link-Ads | WhiteDelivery

On Oct 30, 2007, at 5:41 PM, <(EMAIL OMITTED)> <(EMAIL OMITTED)> wrote:
>
> Text Link Ads Inc. Online Contact Form
> ——————————————
> Name: (NAME OMITTED)
> Email: (EMAIL OMITTED)
>
> Comments: Is it against my agreement with TextLinkAds to have a nofollow tag applied to the TextLinkAds on my site? Thank you.

So in case any of you were wondering whether you could us NoFollow on Text-Link-Ads, the answer is “no.”

Ethical Questions and Text-Link-Ads

The natural result of this is that if we continue to sell Text-Link-Ads on our site, we are admitting that we are selling pagerank. There is nothing morally wrong about selling pagerank.

However, Google certainly has a right to lower its pagerank level for our sites if we are going to profit by selling pagerank, because selling pagerank undermines Google’s effort to provide quality results in its search engine.

Update: Matt Cutts said that “Nofollow is recommended anywhere that links can’t be vouched for.”

Update: At least one other person has heard about NoFollow from Text-Links-Ads.

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