Goodbye Text Link Ads
October 10th, 2007 by Ross McKillop |
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With all the recent talk over buying and selling of text link ads causing a negative effect on your Google PageRank, I’ve decided to disable the text-link-ads.com WordPress Plugin (ie. stop selling text-link-ads). That’s about $100/mo that I’m kissing goodbye just to avoid the possibility that Google might punish me. Here’s why -
They send me more traffic than anyone else. I can’t say I’m entirely happy about the situation, but there isn’t much I can do about it. One thing I can do, is email the folks @ text-link-ads.com and ask if they’d consider adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to each ad they sell. Here’s what I sent -
Hi TLA folks -
With all of the recent talk of Google punishing Text Link Ad buyers
and sellers, are you considering adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to the
link code? I ask because I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop
participating in the TLA program if there’s a chance that it will hurt
my Google rankings/indexing, as Google is by far my #1 source of
traffic. I’d *like* to keep TLA running on my site, as I have 7/8
spots filled and I’m quite happy w/ the service - but again - I can’t
risk a Google punishment for the income that TLA provides. Your
response would be very much appreciated!Thanks!
Ross
That went to sales@, Patrick Gavin (the TLA President), and whomever receives the mail generated by the “contact us” form on the TLA home page. So far, I’ve yet to hear anything back. I’m not surprised, they’re (TLA) probably holding frantic meetings trying to figure out what to do - since this latest not-exactly-official-news has probably seen a lot of folks like myself dropping their service.
4 Responses to “Goodbye Text Link Ads”
By Steven Hodson on Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
I pulled out of TLA for a much simpler reason … absolutely no ads from their service was ever displayed in the sidebar widget nor in the RSS feed. I tried the service for various periods of time since TLA first came on the scene - usually for three month periods at a time.
The last round of inaction was enough and as much as I may not like using AdSense at least I finally go a check from them after a year
.. hopefully it’ll only be 10 months before the next one LOL
By Ross McKillop on Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
@Steven Hodson:
Yeah I have another blog that (in theory) runs TLA - but I’ve never had anyone show any interest in advertising on it via TLA. What I find somewhat amusing is that both blogs have the same PR, so if people really do just want to buy links from sites w/ decent PR, why does this site sell 7/8 and the other 0/8.
By Webomatica on Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
I think Steven steered me away from TLA when he divulged his profit. I’d be kidding myself to think I’d do any better. So this Google PageRank thing is just more evidence to aid my monetization procrastination.
By Gean Oliveira on Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
Hi Ross, just want to tell you that I found your website pretty dam good
I’m getting a lot of information for myself. Thanks! Also, you’re a canadian eh? I’m too 
In addition, I do have TLA on my blog but as you, I’m going to take it out.
See ya!