It’s always interesting to watch aspects of a field you’ve followed for the better part of two years get accepted into the mainstream. Such is the case with United Press International (UPI), a leading news broker, who recently began selling text link advertisements that will be displayed throughout their various channels. While text link ads are nothing new, the method in which UPI is offering these text links are, at least to the mainstream media.
Not only is UPI offering text links, they also listed a number of benefits customers would receive for doing so and all of them were search engine related:
UPI is offering, for a limited time, advertising text links in each section of UPI.com. By purchasing a text link, your website could benefit by:
* Increasing Page Rank
* Attracting more traffic to your site
* Improving search engine results
* Converting traffic into sales
While it’s quite common for sites of this size to offer advertising to potential clients, you very rarely see the sales pitch focus on search engine benefits. Of course, this type of link buying goes against the conventional wisdom according to Matt Cutts:
Google (and pretty much every other major search engine) uses hyperlinks to help determine reputation. Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search. Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results.
Hat-tip to Threadwatch
Chris Richardson
Staff Writer | Murdok
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