In O’Reilly joins the search engine spam parade, blogger Phil Ringnalda takes print and web publisher O’Reilly to task over what he considers off-topic links on some popular O’Reilly websites. The allegation is that the only reason obscure lodging resellers would buy ads on high PageRank programming sites is for the Google ranking benefit.
While I agree that text links to spammy hotel vendors on a tech site is dicey, are publishers now supposed to try to assess how Google might evaluate the “on-topic” nature of an ad? I can imagine a million gray areas where the ad might not relate to the publisher’s primary topic, but might have demographic appeal or other non-obvious value.
Add “nofollow” attributes to take out the link benefits? As an advertiser, would you choose to advertise on sites that handicapped their ads in this manner? I think not, as long as you had alternatives.
If anything, the solution to the problem, if it is indeed a problem, is algorithmic. Should a link from an important site about programming give a “big vote” to a site about hotels? Probably not.
Legitimate publishers who provide free and useful content to their visitors have a challenging enough time making money without having to worry about passing their advertisers through a Google litmus test, or penalizing legitimate advertisers with a “nofollow” attribute.
If Google has a problem with these ads, then they need to look in the mirror and go back to the algorithmic drawing board.
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