digitalpoint's co-op ad network

[Kyle]

So what does everyone think of this lately? I've seen some big people join this network.

It's tempting to join, but I never would as it is a bull**** system that hurts the SEO industry. There is no way search engines would support this kind of link generating.

What are your latest thoughts on this? If you aren't familiar with the network, scroll to the footer on these sites to see it in action. Reload the page to watch random new links appear.

http://www.bestbuy-online.net/
http://www.helpfulhomeideas.com/

[Chris]

I was invited as one of the inaugural 6 members. It was supposed to be only for webmaster forums. I thought it was a good idea then.

It it's current form I think its spam and I won't use it.

[chromate]

I did a trial run after having it recommended by Shawn. Stuck it on one of my smaller sites, so it didn't do an awful lot. You need PR to get the links back to your site over the network. It just seemed too "spammy" to me to continue using it. I also didn't feel comfortable with not having control over where I was sending users.

But according to Shawn, it does work. I believe he has some high rankings on very competitive terms because of it.

[Chris]

I'm going to write a review on it, I've been meaning to do so for a long time. I suppose I should have done so when I first joined as I coulda referred all of you...

[chromate]

I don't think anyone's joined it yet apart from myself and Shawn

[Chris]

(time passes)....

review done.

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/digitalpoint/

[Cutter]

In my opinion, this is blackhat. I was taking a close look at this a few days ago, and I saw quite a few links going to/from SE spam sites.

If it was broken into catagories -- Video Games, Food, Golf, Small Business, etc. I think it would be ok.

I don't care who links to my sites -- I do care who I link to. I don't want a link to a spam site to mess up all the hard work I've put into a site.

[paul]

I have my picture at the top of my home page and want my visitors to feel a connection with me via the home repair advice I provide. A row of links across the bottom of every page that go to a bunch of totally unrelated sites does not provide the kind of warm and fuzzy feeling I like to promote. (I took them down.).

[Peter T Davis]

The vault's network addresses a lot of the problems you note about the coop.

[Mike]

I don't think anyone's joined it yet apart from myself and Shawn

I've used it for a few months on the odd site, it was working but now seems to gradually be getting worse...

[Chris]

so we have dp and linkvault, any others?

[Cutter]

Maybe we need to start our own -- one thats heavily moderated and broken into catagories.

[chromate]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind helping out with that.

[Chris]

If someone coded it I could host it.

[Cutter]

I can help out with design & moderating but I can't code a thing :D

[Mike]

Thats a good idea, especially if it's broken down into categories...

[MarkB]

You mean a system similar to DP? Or something like Link Metro?

[r2d2]

Similar to DP I would think. Link Metro is excellent in my experience, I can't see how we could do anything better, or need to.

Perhaps not only have it well moderated, but you should be able to choose which sites your sites link to?

[Cutter]

I think context is critical here. If you have people chosing to link to unrelated sites the program would essentially fall into the link spam catagory -- which would hurt everyone in the long run, at least with Google.

I'd say its ok to choose who not to link with, but not to allow cross-catagory links. Of course, you could always contact the site owner directly for a hard link.

I'd be willing to put up some money for someone to code this, but only if other people want to too.

[ozgression]

but you should be able to choose which sites your sites link to?

Maybe a better way to do it would be to "block" sites that you don't want to link to.

[MarkB]

Why not require each site to create a 'pool' of links, based on other link partners - so they would be required to select up to, say, 10 other links that they'd be happy to have shown on their site. These then rotate across their page (so if they're happy to show 5 links per page, then it randomises 5 links from the 10).

The more links you show per page, and the more links you have in your pool, the more 'weight' you're given in the system. Or something :)

[Peter T Davis]

How does Link Metro compare against the Coop?

[r2d2]

Link Metro is a system where you can request link exchanges via a website, rather than by emailing various sites. You can choose who you link to.

DP is an automated thing where you put some PHP code on your pages, and it decides which links your pages show.

[eMEraLdwPn]

i'd be willing to code it, but i've never seen or used dp's program so someone would have to explain what it does. from my understanding, they give you some php code which you put on your site, and every time someone loads a page it displays some random links of other members.. am i close?

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Spot on

You have to show the ads on every page on your site

They then have a weighting system that works out how many ads you are showing and the strength of your site, based i thing on Page Rank.

This determines how many times your ads are show on other peoples sites.

[chromate]

I agree that sites shouldn't be able to link out of their own category. I also think that sites should be able to flag sites they don't want to link to as you might not want to link to a direct competitor.

Considering the weighting system, I don't think this would be easy to code. So unfortunately I can't afford the time to take a lead coding role at the moment. However, I would be willing to contribute code / designs / user interfaces etc as part of a collective effort.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I wonder if there is a way to simplify this somewhat (on the weighting side)

It should be fairly easy to monitor how many ad views each site shows (as they will be requested from the server) which would give a simple weighting method. My coding is not sophisticated enough, however to work out how to avoid false impressions etc.

[chromate]

I think something else that would be cool is to have it somehow increase links to your site slowly. So, instead of suddenly getting thousands of new backlinks, it would be at a more natural rate. I'm sure Google is a bit suss of sites that suddenly get thousands of backlinks overnight, especially for new sites (sandbox etc etc).

I guess this could be done by increasing a site's weight in the network slowly. So on a scale of 1 to 10 (for example), instead of a site going straight in at 10, it would go 1, 2, 4, 7, 10 over a set time period (which could be based on other factors).

This would probably act as a spam deterrent too, as sites would have to participate for longer in order to achieve their full weight potential.

... just another little idea anyway :)

[Cutter]

Thats definately a possibility.

I think that the thousands of backlinks overnight thing is a little over-rated. Often it is an indication of a really popular site, such as a blog posting that gets linked to on a bunch of other blogs. However, if no other incoming links get added over a period of time then that could result in a decrease of ranking.

But thats just speculation. The bottom line is that when Google or a search engine sets up certain rules it can result in more relevant results in some catagories but at the same time it can push up the rankings of spam sites in other catagories.

[intelliot]

Does anyone still want to do this? I could help with coding.

[Kyle]

Chris - What about a form of this ONLY for webmaster sites where each member is reviewed. Users don't get to send their weight to random sites. Their weight is automatically given back to their webmaster-related site. It however could be spread among sub pages (articles).

If you started it, people would respect it at first. Code placement would not allowed to be buried in the footer or hidden anywhere.

It may not make you much money, but it would promote your growing web publishing network (i say network because you recently mentioned creating a webmaster directory).

[Chris]

You know that is what DP's started out as.

But I don't really want to get into that type of thing.

[Kyle]

Ya it probably wouldn't work overall. It would probably still be frowned on by search engines. I wouldn't doubt if DP thought of this, and decided to go all out allowing any type of sites to make the best of it, however short lived it is.