Text Link Ads is Dead - Suggested Alternatives?

[mneylon]

Since TLA is pretty much dead at this stage I've been removing the code from the various sites where I had it enabled, however some of the sites had a respectable income stream for zero effort.
Are there any sane alternatives?

 

[Gavin]

I'm poking around for one as well.

I had a great run with TLA while it lasted. As you said, respectable income stream for zero effort.

 

[RedCardinal]

tnx.net seems to be the latest craze

 

[mneylon]

tnx.net seems to be the latest craze

That seems to be another text link brokerage, so I can't see how that would be any different...

 

[RedCardinal]

apparently they dont publish inventory...

 

[mneylon]

apparently they dont publish inventory...

So how does that help?

 

[RedCardinal]

So how does that help?

Well why did TLA die? There's still a lot of money chasing links you know

 

[mneylon]

Well why did TLA die? There's still a lot of money chasing links you know

Fair point

The main problem is that some of my sites have had their PR completely nuked

 

[RedCardinal]

Fair point

The main problem is that some of my sites have had their PR completely nuked

Remove the links and file for reinclusion... then move on to some other forms of payment. Or hang out for a while and then go under the radar.

 

[mneylon]

Do I need to file for reinclusion? As far as I can tell the sites have been hit badly on the PR side, but are still getting SERPS ....

Just wondering ....

 

[Gavin]

tnx.net seems to be the latest craze

The thing I dont like about tnx.net is there selling point for advertisers

Improve your site ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Live.com and more.

Thats like a red flag to a bull (Matt Cutts).

I might test the water with some of my throw away sites.

 

[RedCardinal]

If PR matters to you Michele then file reinclusion requests.

I think the big difference here is that tnx wont be publishing inventory so it wont be as simple for Google to figure out the publishing sites. Even if Google goes undercover and requests some links it'll never scale and Google hates things that dont scale.

That said I wouldn't be using the crown jewels for this... next time Google might come down very hard. Last bruhaha was simply a shot across the bows methinks...

 

[louie]

The last shot from Google, in my opinion, was just checking the waters.
I have a feeling is going to come down again next year but a lot worse.

 

[enzo]

Since TLA is pretty much dead at this stage...

My attention has been elsewhere for the past few months so can someone explain why is TLA 'dead'?? I continue to get paid by these guys and my Google PR hasn't been affected in any way.

What's the story? Is Google trying to screw people for selling text ads on their site? How concerned should one be?

 

[mneylon]

enzo - a lot of people's sites lost PR in the last update due to Google cracking down on sites selling TLA. My personal blog went from a PR of 5 to a PR of 3 and quite a few other people were hit quite badly. As a result I've removed TLA from a lot of my sites, though it's hard to remove it from all of them since I still get paid ...

 

[enzo]

Thanks, that's what I assumed happened. How do they know if you're with TLA ... by crawling through the list of sites listed on TLA?

 

[mneylon]

I presume so

 

[gav240z]

Text link ads are not dead!

Text link ads are not dead, as Matt Cutts says you can use the rel="nofollow" attribute.

Google is concerned about influencing results artificially, probably because they want people to be using PPC .

Text links that pass page rank are the ones they are going after. Text links can still provide good traffic to a website, just make sure they are clearly labeled.

 

[mneylon]

Textlinkads is a specific program. The thread was about that program. Not link ads in general

 

[gav240z]

in that case.

In that case don't worry about me then. I've never used the service.