i am very happy with the coop, but i noticed that my outgoing links are not relevant what so ever. i think it will be more effective if the catgories that are used when submitting a new ad are made use of... also, is there any possibility the coop will ever have links that remain on sites longer so G counts them more?
The usage of the language and categories is coming (no ETA). The co-op will not display ads any differently than it does now. It's advertising not a link exchange.
glad to hear the categories are being worked in...but let's be honest the coop is not used for advertising by the average user, its used to obtain backlinks. i understand permanent backlinks would be near impossible to code, but i think the coop was a great idea and i thank you for it!
Permanent (looking) ads is not impossible... but it's an ad network, not a link network, so it's not going to happen.
hmmmm now im wondering if you are claiming it is an "ad network" bc you are afraid of G reading this... in any case, i have never heard of anyone using it for any prupose other than obtaining backlinks, not displaying ads on other users sites. especially when the categories arent worked out.
I would argue against categorisation for a number of reasons but as I can see that Shawn is in favour and there is pressure from members I won't present that argument but will instead try and help its implementation. I work in the directory business and "related categories" is one of our biggest headaches. If we are going to implement a category based system then the first thing we need to get right are the top level categories. We are going to need many more than 11 categories and need to recognise that "other" and "business" are not suitable categories. This needs a lot more work.
I kinda agree with you jwbond. If its an advertising network, why not use none-spiderable links, and data tracking variables so that people can recieve accurate statistics? If as you say digitalpoint, that its an advertising network, why is the weight based on link popularity ( PageRank ) and number of pages indexed? Surely if it was a advertising network site popularity would come into the equation? Its a nice setup guys, but I've got to call bullshit on all this "its an ad network, backlinks are only a side effect" perspective.
Statistics are coming, the only reason they weren't there before was because of the resources necessary to do it (it's a LOT of resources to track every ad impression for every end user of every site in realtime). PageRank isn't much of a factor... the main reason it's part of the algorithms at all is because you can use it to determine "bad" sites automatically. If a site isn't in the Google index, and they have no PageRank, there is a good chance they are banned by Google for whatever reason. If they are banned by Google, they probably are doing something that we don't want to be associated with. It's not a "catch-all" system, there are still a whole lot of ad network sites that get banned on our end manually for various things. And it will continue to evolve... if a source different than Google becomes a better automatic gauge of spam sites, it will be adopted.
I'm not sure you're getting the point. If the ad-network was not about backlinks then "bad" sites would be irrelevant, because you could use dynamic links no? E.g. ads.adserver.com/ads/?linkID=5456456465 (banning bots from the parent location). Let me ask: Who doesn't use the ad network to increase link popularity? digitalpoint, do you use the ad network to increase link popularity? Peace
In terms of the coop building up links for a site, the links disappear every time the page is refreshed so they aren't worth much to the search engines unless the webmaster has done a ton of other things right for a long time. By itself, the coop isn't much chop in a compeditive serps environment because the link isn't there the next time the search engine spiders the page. The quality of sites in the coop publishing the ads is really high (look through a couple of hundred you would be amazed what's in there). I'm really happy with where my free ads are being run.
Why does an adnetwork need to not be spiderable by search engines? There is no correlation between the two. the point of advertising is to drive traffic to a site and there are a variety of ways to do so. simply because it's an adnetwork, doesn't mean that links shouldn't be followed by bots - that's just faulty logic. And as was pointed out (and discussed some time ago in another thread) stats are coming. I'm qutie sure shawn is a busy guy and doing the best he can. this is free after all.
I'm not saying they shouldn't... Making them spiderable is just fine. I'm not having a dig at the technology used, or time frames for implementing features... How many sites would use the network if the links were none-spiderable/didn't effect serps? My guess? 0 Peace
agreed...who uses the coop to advertise on random sites that probably have nothing to do with their site? I wonder what the actual click through ratio of the coop is, 0.000001%? even though the links are only temperary, they are still very useful for yahoo and msn, as well as google for less competitive words. it works great for me as an seo tool, how is it working for you as an advertising tool?
yeah but who cares what is your guys point?, you great uncoverers , great investigative reporters no one here asked for you guys to critique the system, did they? why does everything have to be one or the other, I get referals from the coop ads, I get links from my coop ads I get referals from my reciprical links, too. Why do you "got to call bullshit" anything? No one asked you to come here and "call" anything. Who are you anyway. Have you actually signed up for the network and tried it on a site? Are you speaking from experience?
My co-op ads give me more traffic than my google serps as I am under the sandbox effect. Thank you DP for this great advertising tool keep up the good work and spread my words "visitdevonandcornwall.com" and all this for free! Is there such a thing as bad publicity?
ferret77 "no one here asked for you guys to critique the system, did they?" From constuctive critisism comes action. I think what these guys said is perfectly reasonable. Until the ads on on target with an algo and in the right language it can only be about link pop.