Is Text Link Ads SERIOUS!

I just found out that TLA is using moving away from TinyUrl! This means we might have to change our TLA affiliate links ONCE more!

This is really pissing me off!

Here is a snippet from their email conversations:

Ian, sorry this was just released late last week. Jonathan is correct.
Just hold tight and we will have something else available in about a week or so.


——————
Brock Boser
Inventory Manager

http://www.ianfernando.com/2007/text-link-ads-moving-away-from-tinyurl-wtf/

 

Ha ha ha - joke, right?
I just spent an hour going around changing all my banners.

 

NOPE I was pissed too when one of my readers informed me about this!! I was like NOOOOO!

 

OMG - please tell me this isn't true,

There is an official TLA rep here on dp

Maybe he will respond

edit !!!!

@the op

Great blog dude - BTW

 

They should just keep thier own links and end all of this.

 

yes they should! who is the rep I want to ask more questions!!!

 

Why on earth you would use tinyurl is beyond me....

Probably to stop google from seeing the textlinkads referral code on people's sites to know they're buying links.

There's much better ways around this though.

 

TINYURL's never expire.. just because they switch for new linking codes, doesnt mean your old one wont work.

 

Well, actually they did initially state the the old links would no longer work - "** Please note that our old affiliate urls will no longer work in one week so please update today. Thank you!"

I'm sure that a ton of people wrote to complain about the move to tinyurl and how it was wrong for so many reasons. The response I got back from them was - "We are working on a better solution and will have it available next week. You do not need to make any changes."

One can only assume that perhaps this change was due in part to make it more difficult for Google to determine which sites were using TLA? Regardless it is good to see that they are responding to the criticism and working on a better solution.

 

You guys should use redirect files so you only have to change the code in one place.

 

Intentionally hiding something from Google is not good. If webmasters do this, they could be hit with a penalty, if Google chooses to do so of course. I do not believe TLA will be able to pull the wool over the all seeing Google.

 

Why would they want to hide the links from Google? Just because someone is a TLA affiliate doesn't mean they buy or sell links.

 

exactly - that is what I do - I have redirects and I just change my one file - the only reason I bring this up is because for the others that may not

 

Yeah but some websites will show the affiliate link as "buy a link here" on their website below all the other "sponsored links" they've got in place. That's easy pickings for Google to see that they're selling links.

 

Good call there

 

There's too much efforts playing in TLA.
I would consider anything else except it.

 

well - I have yet to hear about the TLA new system - I guess they are busy working on the non standard banner size of auctions ads

 

Creating a redirect file is easy, and saves time. I recommend everybody should do it.

 

Using the redirect is the simplest way of doing things.

1) As Entrep says, you only need to update a single file
2) You can make your URL more user friendly (i.e. mysite/recommends/textlinks/)

Anyway, back on topic, has anyone had an official line on this? I was just about to change my redirect files to point to the TinyUrl links...

 

Just had my official cut and pasted response from TLA confirming that there is no need to change any links at this stage.

Why oh why did TLA not notify publishers directly? If it hadn't been for Ian posting on here and on his blog, I'd have never have known about this?

I love TLA. I think it's a great program and I have no hesitation in recommending it to people but they're not very good at communicating information to their network