Text Link Info

This month, I’ve blogged about what everyone else was blogging in the blogosphere — Google de-ranking web sites and blogs selling text advertisements. Understandably, everyone was in uproar over their lowered PageRanks. I, myself have been an unsuspecting victim, my two PR3 web sites getting hit and getting de-ranked by 1 PageRank. I took it calmly but it angered me nevertheless. Why penalize me when the only ads I’ve ever ran were by Google Adsense? I understood it later though — I was penalized because I ran mutual text links under the header tag, “Link Exchange.” I’m pretty much sure Google thought I was selling links. You know what, I should have if I was going to be penalized anyways.

One of my acquaintances reported that his blog was de-ranked because he was selling Text Link Ads in his blog. And apparently, he wasn’t the only one. During the initial de-ranking, a lot of bloggers dropped Text Links Ads from their revenue sources. My acquaintance pulled down his TLA banner too. Apparently though, there’s a work-around all of these. You can still sell TLA without being penalized by Google. Shoemoney has blogged about it. Ever wondered how Google knew you were selling Text Link Ads? The key happens to be in the TLA code. The old TLA codes carry the line “function tla_ads.” Hence, if you do a search for it, all TLA publishers using the old plug-in are easy to pinpoint.

You don’t have to give up TLA after all. If you used to run TLA but have dropped it since the de-ranking, go log in your accounts now and grab the new codes. Update your web sites start earning from TLA revenue again. I wonder how long before Google figures out how to work around this new discovery — what with everyone blogging about it and all. I reckon, not long.

Filed under: Industry News, Google PageRank, Selling Text Links