I have heared today from several "insiders" that google is exploring the co-op network covertly to see what they can do about people using co-op ads. ALthough i certainly hope this great network keeps up I am concerned about possible repercusions this might have on my sites. On a sidenote these sources also mentioned that link-vault is under scrutinity by google. Then again this might just be part of the rumor-mill. Any ideas on this would be appreciated
I have no idea who these people are (or who they claim they are), but if Google wanted to do something about the coop, they would've done it long ago. it's actually less strong in Google than it used to be; don't believe for a second it was targetted individually though.
Google not doing something a long time ago in my opinion does not mean that they will neglect to do it at all. I think it might just be a case of priorities and (profit) timeframe.
1) as said previously, it doesn't work quite as strongly as it used to 2) the sandbox stops most users from getting much out of it, as they're rather ignorant to when it is and isn't appropriate to throw thousands of links at a site... compared to everything in google, the few sites using and benefiting from the coop are relatively small. google also has a policy of dealing with problems algorithmically when possible-- doubt they'd specifically go out of their way to reverse engineer the ad network and penalize sites for it. googleguy (iirc?) even talked about it on threadwatch at one point, a long while back.
The coop links have a gif image next to them served from ads.digitalpoint.com. This makes it very easy for google to stop the coop having any benefit. If they wanted to do it they would have done it years ago. Maybe they have to some extent.
And there was me thinking Google would have to be clever to devalue them - but a big whooping footprint hands it out on a platter.
Google wouldn't even need to look for the footprint assuming the algorithm for giving no weight to new links is working OK.
the algo for no weight to new links is, uh, a joke pretty easy to get great rankings with the coop. it's still tougher than just that. that makes it easy to devalue sites that RUN the network (which they still don't do), nothing to do with where the links are pointing at though.
As disgust says it would be very silly of them to delete sites that are linked in the network, that would mean that if you wish to have your competitor banned you could hire someone to coop him and get them sandboxed.
Wow - this rumor has never made the rounds before! I am so glad that Google has nothing better to do than meddle with a cooperative advertising system.
A couple of months ago, my most important 2 sites where dropped from Google's index, they were not even found when searching for the site's names (adolix and coredownload) they were both in the Coop network. I suspected it was Coop's fault, I searched on the net, found other people that beleived that.... So i removed Coop from the 2 sites, then filled 2 reinclusion requests (from the Sitemap application) where I admited I used Coop and that I removed it, and a couple of weeks I was back in Google's results MY OPINION is that Coop is on Google's black list... so I'm out of it I don't suggest you not to use it, but you should be carefull...
The Co-Op page: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/ is not even indexed in Google... if that's any indication of what Google thinks. .
Baby crap? I think google will decide if the fish is big enough to fry. And I wouldnt call co-op baby crap to start with.
You really think Google is concerned with it? It's been around for years. They took a look at it and ignored it. Their algos can easily handle deciphering something like this. No need to ban it.
Do you really think the Coop page would fail to rank for its own title unless Google had applied a penalty? http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Co-op+Advertising+Network&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
Only trouble with thta reasoing is that similarly you can't find the KWT either: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...+ranking+&+keyword+tracker"&btnG=Search&meta=