TechCrunch advertisers can get penalized by Google

Each one of the four premium ad spots on TechCrunch currently sell for $10,000 per month. That may seem like a lot of money at first but when you consider the fact you're reaching 3 million eye balls from a very targeted audience every month it's not so bad. But before you pony up the 10 grand for one of these spots you better take a moment to consider the potential consequences.

Yes that's right, I said consequences. You're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about, aren't you? Google has come out and said that paid link advertising without the use of a link condom is subject to penalization. Those ads on TechCrunch are currently running without link condoms so every one of those advertisers could potentially be penalized by Google.

Matt Cutts, Senior Google Engineer, has clearly stated Google's stance on selling links is clear and says they can pretty accurately spot paid links, both manually and with their algorithms.

The main point I want to get across is that in 1-2 minutes, it was easy to tell whether a site was (over)doing reciprocal links or trying to buy links.

Not only do the sites that buy the links risk losing trust, Matt has also said that the site selling the links also run that risk.

Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.

I'll be the first to say that I don't agree with the way search engines treat paid links. Sure, no one wants to see Viagra links everywhere but the search engine algorithms should be good enough to decipher the good from the bad. I'm pretty certain the advertisers on TechCrunch aren't buying those links for the seo value, and that's certainly not why Mike Arrington selling them. It will just be interesting to see what comes of all this.

Is Google going to turn the cold shoulder because TechCruch is so popular? Surely they know about these links by now, or is their algorithm just not good enough to spot these.

It's a simple fix, all Mike Arrington needs to do is add a link condom to each of those links. A link condom is nothing more than the rel="nofollow" tag added inside the link element.

Unless you're an experienced SEO and know exactly what you're doing, you should request a link condom anytime you purchase a link or banner ad that directly links to your site. Otherwise you are risking the potential of being penalized in the search engines.

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Reader Comments (2)

Will McInnes, June 16, 2006

Interesting post Cameron. I think you're on to a big issue for bloggers in particular. (BTW, I found you guys by way of the Mashable blog).

Cameron Olthuis, June 16, 2006

Will, I thought so too which was the purpose of this post. I was trying to raise awarness about the issue now that so many bloggers are selling advertising and links. So far I don't think it's had the affect I'd hoped for.