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Dangers of link-rentals

A lot of site- and blog-operators seem to think they have found a new goldmine with the rental of textlinks and that not only since Linklift introduced the concept of Text Link Ads to Germany. Many vendors do not seem to be aware though that this also hides dangers for their own sites.

Currently, searchengines will still calculate the ranking mostly out of external factors which the siteoperator can not quickly and easily manipulate themselves like the Title-tag for example. One, and probably the most important of these external factors at the moment is the quality, quantity and distribution of incoming links. Links that point from one site to the next will count as positive valuations for that site and will become part of the ranking.

If the siteoperators will start to place links, not because they are put there as a recommendation for the linked site but because they are paid for, the searchengines will loose a ranking base and the quality of the searchresults will decrease. Everyone should be aware that searchengines will not just let this happen. For years, Google is handling this by keeping links from inheriting PageRank for sites that are detected to be selling links. We can assume that Google will not only stop the inheritance of PageRank but also the inheritance of any kind of “Google-Juice” for outgoing links. This filter will permanently stay with the domain – even if, after a few month of years, the sale of links has lost importance and new forms of advertisement are developed.

I am categorically against the sale or purchase of links. There will surely be many examples where links that are subject relevant and an added value to the user are being sold or rented out. Though before they do this, those siteoperators should think long and hard about which links they will admit onto their site, which means a recommendation for that site, and how publicly they want to communicate the sale of links. Maybe a large Text-Link-Ads-button on the blog might not be the best of ideas.