Google Bans Ads for Paid Links
Last night on Waxy.org: Links I came across a nice article talking about paid links. It basically said that Google has banned ads for paid links sellers (the original article is on Google Blogoscoped).
The article talks about Google cracking down on paid links that don’t carry the nofollow attribute. The article shows two picture of Google search results for “pr8.”
First off I will say that I personally believe that paid links should be allowed, if anything Google should change, not website owners.
But, it doesn’t look like Google has completely fixed the problem, a quick Google search for “links” showed this:
As you can see by clicking on the picture above in the “sponsored links” section on the right the ads are as followed:
- Buy 500+ Lnks
- Oneway Links $20 a Month
- Buy Links Here
- 5 Ways to Build Links
- Buy Marketing Links
- Massive Link Popularity
And on the top of the page:
- 1000s of Links from $10/m
- Buy Links
- Buy Links
(it doesn’t look like they did that good of a job banning them)
As a side note, at the time of writing this, that is what you will get but I do understand that by the time this is posted it may be a little different.
It just goes to show you that what Google is doing WILL NOT fix the “problem” of paid links, it will only push further and further underground making it harder for Google to distinguish who is and who isn’t selling paid links (potentially making it more difficult to penalize those who are doing so).
Like I said above, I believe that with all of the PHDs in Google someone there should be able to figure out a better solution to this “problem.”
WP Theme Marketplace, Feedburner Glitch, and WordPress Plugins
WP Theme Marketplace will soon be opening. WP Theme Marketplace is going to be (as the name implies) a marketplace for WordPress themes. WordPress.com bloggers will be able to pay to use the themes in the marketplace while WordPress.org users will be able to use the themes for free. More at Everybody Go To.
Google’s Feedfetcher stats weren’t showing up when users were looking at Feedburner stats over the weekend. More at Problogger.
WordPress Plugins - Admin Drop-Down Menus, Different Posts Per Page, Download Counter Lite, Download Counter Advanced, etc. More at Weblog Tools Collection.
Scrutiny Is Back
So I took a little bit off from writing on this blog but I’ve decided that the break must end. I have been busy writing on CyberSurge but to be honest with you I miss writing on this blog, it is fun and always interesting. When I first opened this blog I was lucky if I got any traffic at all throughout the day but now I get a decent amount of traffic day to day and I haven’t even posted in almost a week.
So, I have decided to get going again on this blog. I have some interesting posts planned for the next week or so. Some things will change here, namely the frequency of posting, before I took the break I was writing a post every week day, well, I have decided that with all of the work that I have been doing on my other blog I don’t have the time to write here everyday, so I’m not going to make any promises on when I will post and how often I will.
So expect some posts in the next week and I hope you all enjoy it.
Slow Times
Currently I have been tied up with my other blog, CyberSurge. I have been extremely busy, I wrote a post that has been getting a tremendous amount of traffic and alongside dealing with comments I also started trying to monetize the blog, writing up an Advertise page, and working on a redesign for CyberSurge.
Because of this I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write new content for this blog, I tried last week to do a short post a day but I feel bad about how boring the posts were. I finally decided that unless the post was going to live up to my standards I’m just plain not going to post it.
Should blogs mention significant days if it has nothing to do with their niche?
Yesterday was September 11th, and my heart goes out to all who have been affected by it, but it brings up the question, should blogs mention significant days if it has nothing to do with their niche? The simple answer is: probably not. If you can bring it into a story to make a point (like I did here) then maybe you have something going for you, but I don’t need ExtremeTech telling me about Arbor day (obviously this is an exaggeration), that is fine that it is in your mind but I don’t need YOU to tell me about it, you are ExtremeTech, talk about some freakin technology, extreme, tech, whatever, Arbor day doesn’t really have anything to do with what you normally talk about, so don’t talk about it.
I did mention September 11th in this post, was that ok? Yes, because it has something to do with what I talk about, blogging.
We all know that September 11th was a tragedy, it was horrible that it happened but when you write in a blog you should try to be a little bit more professional and talk about what you talk about on your blog. John Chow wrote about going off topic on his blog, saying at the end that you should not go too off topic. He was absolutely correct, when you go off topic it puts your readers off, even if what the off topic post is about is really important, it doesn’t have a place on your blog so don’t do it.