Will Google Penalize the Coop? - A Coop Comparison - If you are new - A Must Read

This is for newbies to the coop. I see the same question over and over again.
Will Google penalize me for being in the Coop?

1st - As of today there are tons of website getting booted out of their position with the search engines. This is not due to the coop. This happens on every major google update. If you remember the Florida Update, you will also remember that Google made a public apology for these and explained that this happens when they do their updates.

2nd - Everyone keeps asking about the coop. Have you ever heard of a banner exchange? Have you ever seen websites that have banners that change on their website every time you refresh the page? This is known as an automated banner exchange. Usually you will see these banner exchanges on websites that sell impressions from their website. This is also known as banner rotation.

The website tracks the amount of times your banner (along with the link to your website) is shown on their website pages. Banner Exchanges have never gotten anyone in trouble. They have been out since the LiveScript language was created by NetScape, now known as JavaScript. As a matter of fact they are very popular among the websites. Tribal Fusion (You adware haters will know that name... makes me cringe just repeating it) is one of the biggest banner exchange websites on the Internet. Advertising on websites has never gotten anyone in trouble with the search engines and it is not about to start now.. It has not gotten anyone kicked out of the search engines.

Do you think that these people that are participating in banner exchanges are being penalized... I can tell you that they are not. Would you like proof?
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&ie=UTF-8&q=gift+baskets
The number 1 website participates in numerous amounts of banner exchanges and text link exchanges both automated and standard... over 21,000 of them. They have been number 1 in Google for as long as I have been going for that search term. They buy more advertising on websites than you can imagine. Some of this advertising has the same concept as the network. The links are there 1 refresh and not there on the next refresh.

The only thing that the coop does is offer you the chance to advertise your website link on other peoples websites without paying for it. Shawn could charge an arm and a leg for this service and I know many SEO's that would flock to this for whatever the price. Thank you Shawn for providing this service free of charge.

The Coop is exactly what Shawn says it is. It is an Advertising Coop. It allows you to advertise your website on other peoples websites for free. This is not about "fooling the search engines".

You cannot believe how many people out there believe the following myths:
The Biggest -
1. A one way link (meaning your link on someone else's website pointing to you but you don't have a link pointing to them) is fooling the search engines and deceiptful (Plain and simple- Those people are uneducated and need NOT to be listened to... and if they are educated and they still believe that, we call them ID10Ts).
Want some proof? www.statcounter.com has a PR9. They do not exchange links, they do sell advertising. How did they get this great recognition from Google? They place a hidden link on every counter they put out on the Internet pointing to their website. They have millions of them. Millions of one way links pointing to them.

2. Search Engines cannot walk ASP or PHP pages. (I actually had someone refuse to exchange links because I had their link on a static PHP page. I explained to him about session IDs and then laughed because he believed that myth and he was okay with exchanging after that)

3. You are fooling the search engines and being deceiptful if you use any other tactic than exchanging links. YIKES!

Any SEO's that have any comments please feel free to add them.

 

Besides, this network doesn't have a way to easily identify the links as part of this network.

 

The only difference is that this time it's free, and there's no doubt as to the scruples of the folks running it.

It's annoying to see people get mad: "I spent all that time working so hard to get recip or one way links and these jokers go in and get hundreds or thousands of links in just a week!" That's like someone getting mad at a PC user because they spent two years typing up a manuscript on a typewriter. Quit being jealous and JOIN NOW!

 

I personally am running a test case using the co-op on a site. At the start of the test it was ranked at 130. It has dropped to 147. As of tonight it is position 101. The site is 7 month old quickly heading to eight since the site was actually completed.

The key, from what I can tell based up onthe feb 2 update is varying the anchor text. Right now I am running 20 units using 20 different kw. The percent I am running is 2.3% of available weight. The balance of the weight across three sites Is being used to run two additional tests.

Thus far, the key appears to be the anchor diversity and insuring you spread your weight out. This is just IMHO as one site was focused on two terms for two pages and has collapsed in Google. Basically, all its allinanchor position is gone. I believe this is absolutely and OO Penalty.

So, if new, diversify and start slow. The test continues between the sites and once the serps settle out, I will begin raising the weight on the primary KW to see at what point the site collapses in Google. As stated, its not the co-op that is penalized it is the manner it is used apparently in terms of link diversity to a given page.

I think this is a must know for everyone to maximize effective use and benefit in not just MSN & Yahoo, but G as well.

Cheers

 

Well, there is obviously a way, otherwise how would the validator check?

 

You would need the database that is used to store the website links, which nobody has except DP.

 

Gchaney,

I have found the same. launched in August, it would be interesting to compare results. I am using 4 adds on co-op will be increasing shortly.

ProductinePC,

A friend of mine was killed off from google about 3 years ago for a link exchange set-up, I will find all the details today (at 9-5 job currently) and post this evening.

 

Nope, everyone has it....or at least a big proporation of it. ad_network_ads.txt

 

Yup, you can check for the ad_network_ads, or the adnetwork php file, both will tell google if you have used/use the coop.


Josh

 

I'm more worried about Google restricting PR from rotating links. Its already quite accepted that the older a link is the more weight it has, therefore it would only be an advancement on this to discount rotating links altogether.

 

This won't happen unless PR is totally scrapped for two reasons. 1.) Most of the major news sites change AP and RSS links hourly if not by the minute. This would mean hot topics and current events wouldn't be found as easily (or until 2 months later when they are no longer relevant)

2.) To a lesser extent, there are lots of examples of legitimate reasons for rotating advertisements or resources. There is no way Google can install such a sweeping change without major drawbacks

__________________
Health Forum | Submit your site - No Recip Needed | Get Your Site Ranked Quick - Coop Network

 

Sue,

It would be impossible for G to do this.
(Checking for those two files is the best point brought up thus far however not everyone uses the ad_network.php file. They do use the ad_network_ads.txt but I remember reading in one of these posts about someone asking if they could change the name of that file).

Link rotations have been around since before G was around and yahoo was still in diapers.

They have never penalized a website and are not about to start now.

Currently,
Our ranking for the keyword phrases we are going after is near first page positioning after 17 days. Other people have been in the network since August and still have number 1 position.

 

Wayne, If you read my post im not saying I think they will penalize a site for using a rotating link system - but could implement a filter to discount such links. And if you think for one minute, just because rotating links have been around before Google, this somehow exempts them from falling foal to their guidelines, your stick your head in the sand. And YFS1, as Google knows what is news and what isn’t by their search logs and news channel, it wouldn’t be too hard for them to know which links where due to this and which are not.

 

The coop is the same concept as Google AdSense. Google themselves outputs sometimes, non-relavent ads to your website. This coop is not exactly the same things because Google Adsense is smarter however it is the same concept.

Both side of the coin
Implementing a filter would have major drawbacks. The most G will do is remove the importance of anchor text because of programs like these. This programs copies their own ad network. There is no rules against placing ads on your website in a rotating manner.

If they do manage to place a filter for this type of stuff, what have you really lost? You haven't paid for the service so there is no risk or loss monetarily, they are not going to throw websites out for having a banner or link rotating system so there is no risk or loss there. You may lose your number 1 positioning however where does that put you.... back where you started so you really haven't lost anything there either. I don't see the issue.

 

I'd recommend everyone rename the files once properly setup on their servers. That'd be the easiest way of determining a dp coop network user.

 

That's what I did when I installed it. You also have to change the name in the scripts though.

Fact is, we are, in the end, helping google list up to date, relevent sites. MOST people putting effort into seo'ing their sites are going to seo for the right keyphrase and keep their sites up to date. In MOST cases, it's too much work to do all this and have people come to a site that doesn't apply.

 

Ok, we both know the main difference between ad sense and co op ads! (Or more so why). Co op ads are done in plain html links which count towards inbound links, ad sense uses re-directs which dont count towards ibl's, therefore by filtering out rotating links from the ranking algo wouldn't have any affect on ad sense! And, you could potentially loose a lot, if your livelihood depends on your website. ie) If you host a thousand external links on your website giving pr to other sites, and your expected return links from the network have lost all their weight - where do you think your ranking would be then? Its all hypothetical I know, but no one knows what the next update is going to bring.. But I don't think people should give up seeking out links the old fashioned (albeit very tedious in comparison) way just yet..

 

Oh I agree, keep link trading as well as this however, if you lost all of the links from the coop then you would be no worse off than before you started therefore actually gaining and losing nothing.

 

"the same concept as Google AdSense", does Google AdSense increase link popularity? Does Google AdSense exist to manipulate Google rankings?

I think this should definetly be taken into consideration when joining the network. Personally I believe there should be some kinda warning for users.

I've seen DP's own sites (hummer site + western union + ebay site), and several other sites fall. The only thing I see the sites have in common is the use of link networks.

In all seriousness if you was in googles position would you permit such activity? Was DP's eBay page REALLY relevant to the search term "ebay"?

This however is just my take on things. I'm just warning webmasters sites could get burned.

 

sfhuck and xml, what information do you posess to warrant such "recommendations" and "warnings"?