Google and Text Link Advertising

This is an interesting issue, and I’m sure it’s only going to become bigger.

Google created the text link market by placing value on text links for search results.

Google competes directly with websites who sell text links with their Adwords/Adsense services.

Punishing sites that sell text links will be viewed as anti-competitive by unfriendly people in the DOJ.

It will certainly drive the text link market deeper underground, and you’ll see less of the list of links under a “sponsors” heading.

I also predict it will make owners of popular websites less willing to trade links, and even less willing to freely link to sites of value.

More web marketers will see the buying of links for the value of the traffic rather than the PageRank.

Some websites will get hit with the text link selling penalty even though they don’t sell text links.