Hey, I have nothing against my Polski brothers and sistas, but I don't appreciate the fact that foreign language links are running on my web site. If you asked me that does not look natural on my site which is in English. Anyone else feel the same way? Maybe I missed it, but there should be an option to prevent a language other than your own displaying ads on the pages. Also, while I'm on this rant - the sooner Coop starts requiring "title case" on link text, the better - it doesn't look good with lower cased link text mixed in with other links in title case. Make it uniform. I love this coop thing, and realize it's free - but it begs for improvement. If I am to put this on my best sites it needs to be first class. What do you think?
I agree 100%. Where the heck did all these polish guys come out from??? My sites are full of skwaskanza ads and they look horrible.
Well, I am of the undersanding that we will eventually be showing related ads on the site, so this really shouldnt matter right now. Is my assumption correct here?
I also agree that you should at least be able to specify language at this point, but the normal argument is that links are links so who cares. I agree that it does matter if we are trying to distinguish ourselves as an "Ad Network" instead of for purely SEO purposes. I also think at this point it seems as though there are enough sites to start the sorting by language.
Well I agree that it would be beneficial to display ads in the same language as the site is. Apart from aesthetics, it would also make the ads more relevant . Maybe from Poland ? I would also appreciate not to see those english keyeyophonow ads as they look horrible
Once the ability is implemented, it will be optional and affect your weight accordingly. The less ads you choose to display (could be language, theme and/or specific URLs), the less your ads will be displayed, that way it's balanced.
I wonder how much weight this Polish guy has to get his ads shown so much, I see those ones more than any others.
I just copied this from a previous post. It goes better here anyway. I am reading a lot of requests to have the ads on a website more relevant towards that website they are shown on. Has anyone stopped to think of what kind of impact that would have? Let's say Shawn was able to implement some type of filter that would make it so that ads shown are related to the particular website they are on. Okay, that means that your website, in turn, will only be shown on other relevant websites. Let's say there are 10 websites out that deal with cars. Well, you are one of those 10, your link will only be shown on 10 websites instead of 6000 or even 100 websites.... it doesn't matter the amount. The whole point is that whomever goes for that will severely be decreasing their link popularity across the network and that will not be made up just because the sites are more relevant. I personally would rather have my link advertised on 6000 unrelated websites (and show the same on my site) rather than only 100 websites that deal with just gifts. Now, if you are concerned about traffic coming in from those websites, absolutely they should be more relevant but I think we are all seeing more traffic from the search engines rather than the websites themselves. Just my 2 cents..... anyone else have any thoughts?
YOu're certainly welcome to that opinion and nobody is looking to tell you which sites you can display. I for one look forward to the ability to make that choice on my own.
PPC, if it's done algorithmetically then we all have to stop our AdSense accounts. The way Shawn is about to implement it is best IMO. Just based on user input and penalized if you block too many.
So I have to tell you something funny. Im polish, I have english speaking site and Im annoyed with russian ads (links to porn sites). Isn't that a total mixup?
Links to adult sites are not accepted in the co-op. Could you provide us some examples of such links you've seen displayed on your site ?
This is not an network ad, but you can find those links in signatures and posts of people signing up just to spam. I know it's different to ad network, but it's just an example of how the things can get weird.
A Polish or Russian ad looks out of place on an English language site which makes the coop ads look more like spam. They look like unrelated content added to the bottom of the page just to... you know what. That's not what the Coop is about, is it??? Sorry, but I don't think language is the same as trying to match site content with similar content sites - ie relevance. That linking strategy is up to the webmasters as to how they want to link their sites with other sites. Me, I agree that it's better to have quantity/quality links such as coop wide links, but in addition to relevance, which we can do ourselves with link trades etc. The reason I point out the foreign text links is that it makes my pages look like spam which is potentially harmful to any site displaying the links and ultimately to the Coop as a whole. Sorry, but ask almost anyone about comment and blog text link spam and they'll tell you that a lot of it is Russain, Polish, East European - not just keywords like Viagra and Casino. It doesn't seem right to force spammy looking foreign keyword phrases on us English language Coop members just because it may easier to include them than filter them out. The foreign text links should be the minority, so why not penalize them instead of penalizing the "English Majority". How many Polish and Russian sites are there in the Coop and how many English sites are there? Who should be more important? Polish ads should only run on Polish Language sites, or sites that do not care what the language is. I bet the majority of English sites care, but how many want to give up any weight. If anything you should devalue the "polish" links so they don't appear as often as they are, not the other way around. Do you think that Google or Overture would accept Polish Ads for non-polish keywords??? I don't think so. That said I love the Coop - I am just trying to think of the big picture and how it affects all of us involved.
Well... now that I think about this... if I was the Google bot and I see a link for an American insurance company on a site in Poland that sells puppies, I sure would think that is weird... it would be the same for Polish ads on English sites... I guess I will get rid of them after all, just hope Shawn finishes this update this soon
Great post! I agree 100%. I just also want to add that if you don't like the way the coop works, you shouldn't use it (forthe time being)... We all know that changes are being made over time in respect to how the coop works, but until then, it works the way it does. And it still works well...
1001 - your reasoning is partly flawed though (yet I agree with a lot of it). As an advertiser you want to appeal to a certain target audience. Most sites might be English but that doesn't necessarily mean the visitors are English speaking only. If I know my target audience from non-UK/USA country X hangs out on a certain English website domain.com which happens to be a quality resource on the stuff I sell on my site (relevance) or happen to be of the same demographics as my customers then I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to have ads in that country X's language on the english site. Just look at Eufa cup and Champions LEague football matches. It's quite common to advertise in the language of the target audience, even when it's different to the country the advertisement is in. I know it works a tad different in this coop since you don't have much choices (yet) but the principle still holds true and pan-country language-specific advertising shouldn't be discarded since it's a powerful tool in attracting those you're after.