Jeremy Zawodny Says No to Link Condoms
I recently received an email letting me know that blogging superstar Jeremy Zawodny has decided to sell text links on his blog. If you have no idea who Jeremy is, you might be wondering why I’d waste the time to write about it. After all, he certainly isn’t the first blogger to decide to monetize his site with paid text links. And you are right. If Jeremy was just another blogger selling links, I wouldn’t have ever mentioned it. But Jeremy isn’t just another blogger. He is an extremely prominent blogger who also happens to work for Yahoo Search.
All search engines (including Jeremy’s employer) have made it very clear that they despise paid text link advertising. Sponsored text links on trusted sites like Jeremy’s causes all kinds of problems for search engines because they don’t believe a paid link should count as an algorithmic vote.
Penalizing trusted sites for selling links isn’t really an option because so many people search for them by name. Removing them from SERPS would leave users wondering why they can’t find their favorite sites.
Trusted sites also pass on an incredible amount of link juice so throttling them (preventing them from passing their juice to other sites) isn’t a great option either because it has a negative impact on all the non-paid links as well.
Ideally, a search engine’s goal is to separate out only the paid links for throttling. But that is something that is easier said then done. And that is why search engineers like Matt Cutts have been pushing the idea of "safe linking."
Safe linking involves placing a link condom on all paid text links. If trusted site owners were to do that, search engines wouldn’t have any problems with paid links. But the dilemma for the site owner is that using condoms dramatically reduces the value of the links.
So what did Jeremy decide to do? He works for a major search engine. You would think he would be sensitive to the problems caused by unsafe linking. Surely he followed Matt’s suggestion and applied condoms to all his paid links.
Nope. Apparently, he decided in favor of the cash. As I write this, there isn’t a single condom anywhere in Jeremy’s paid links.
So what will happen next? Will Jeremy cave and add the condoms? If he does, will advertisers continue to pay $300.00 per month for a juice-free link? Or will he stand his ground, forcing his good buddy Matt to take punitive actions? Will Matt throttle Jeremy’s entire site or will he take the easy way out and simply stick it to the individual advertisers?
I have no idea, but it’s going to be fun to watch it all play out. 
Comments
24 Responses to “ Jeremy Zawodny Says No to Link Condoms ”
Got something to say?
Wonder if someone will be getting “the talk” at work this week
I see some interesting research to be conducted if he does not get the talk.
can’t pay for links
can’t trade links
can’t reciprocate links
can’t have sex with links without wearing a sock
can’t
can’t
can’t
[...] Web Guerilla complained about Jeremy Zawodney monetizing his blog through links. He says that because Jeremy has a high powered site, he should be sensitive to search engines algorithm problems and should sell links on his blog that don’t benefit the linkers in the search engines (He says he should put a “condom” on his links). [...]
I purchased one of the sponsor ads on Jeremy’s Blog. According to you, Greg, I should be penalized for purchasing advertising space on a high-profile and high-traffic website.
I have good rankings on the search engines already, thank you… I purchased this link for traffic and care less if it gives me a boost in G, Y, or M.
P.S. I think it’s B.S. that a site owner could get penalized for displaying paid ads yet it’s ok to display Google’s paid ads? Can you say… MONOPOLY?
[...] Ahora Jeremy Zawodny, el homólogo del señor Cutts en Yahoo! ha ofrecido enlaces patrocinados en su blog, sÃ, venta de enlaces de texto, por lo que la polémica está servida. El primero en comentarlo fue Greg Boser de donde se extendió la discusión a TW o al blog de SEW (en inglés) y desde hoy a los principales medios hispanos como El Telendro, Online o los foros de Xeoweb. [...]
Sponsor, if you bought the link for traffic and not for page rank, then adding “nofollow” should be fine with you. You wouldn’t be being penalized, just not getting a huge page rank bonus you don’t deserve and apparently don’t want.
[...] Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo! is now officially selling links on his weblog. Here is more on the story. Feel free to comment on this blog to let us know what you think. Has the Yahoo! employee gone too far doing something that search engines have declared a big no no considering that the tactic has been used to taint and manipulate organic results like nothing else? [...]
As the employee of a search engine IMO he should have a non-follow for sure. Otherwise his blog is being manipulated to alter rankings which is a bad example to set.
[...] More Coverage: Webguerrilla - real Danny Sullivan - real John Jonas - real funny [...]
If Jeremy’s paid links go to highly-useful quality websites (ie, authority sites) then where’s the crime in him accepting a payment? Like, he’s not supposed to earn money from his blog or something?
If his paid links went to junk sites, then yes, I agree it’s a problem. If he accepts paid links to spam websites then I think you’ll see the trust for his blog drop quickly. Surely that is enough risk to prevent a major conflict of interest?
[...] So what does all this movie trivia have to do with search engines, well thanks to Jeremy Zawodny a large portion of the web just got one step closer to lesbian porn. WebGuerrilla broke the story of A-List blogger Jeremy Zawodny selling text links without a link condom. The ethics of the whole debate raged across the web (threadwatch, seoroundtable, oilman, searchenginewatch, John Jonas) . However as search engine engineer Matt Cutts from Google points out one of the websites he links to is a lesbian porn scraper website. [...]
ok Tim but who evalutes the quality of the site being linked to? and who judges if the person doing the linking is smart enough to choose who to link to?
Google & Yahoo must be kicking themselves in the ass daily when they realise there’s probably a billion or more annual dollars in ‘privately brokered’ web advertising and they’re missing out on it.
How dare someone broker their own ads without paying the 30/40/50% commission-per-click to Y or G????
If Yahoo and Google were ‘unbiased’ then they might receive a little more support for trying to dictate how others monetize their sites. The pair of them are like little emo boys, crying from the lap of luxury because “it’s so unfair dude, you’re skewing our serps that we go to great troubles to produce [3 inches below the advertising]“.
[...] ah….what an exciting week it’s been so far! All this talk about "buying links" featured everywhere. Matt’s giving the good ole Google PR advice, Jeremy from Yahoo is saying "I’ll sell links", Threadwatch, Rand (more), Aaron, Greg, Dave and everyone else has been chatting about it. Matt’s even on Round 2 (not counting mentions in this thread) of dishing out the Google PR advice on buying/selling links. [...]
[...] While Google’s Matt Cutts is on a campaign to eradicate all unnatural linking, Yahoo!’s Jeremy Zawodny is defending them. In recent news, WebGuerrilla writes Zawodny Says No to Link Condoms which basically describes how on Jeremy Zawodny’s personal blog, he has paid links from a well known text link ads brokerage house. Jeremy responded to the criticism late last night defending the paid links he has on his site; * I didn’t hide the links. (Remember the WordPress fiasco?) * They’re clearly labeled as sponsored links. * They’re far less annoying than distracting graphical ads. * I’ve made it possible for anyone to comment on them. In public. Who else does that? * They don’t show up in my RSS feed(s). * I rejected the on-line casino, drug sales, cheap hotels, and really offensive stuff–basically, anything the reminded me of blog comment spam I’ve bit hit with or that sends me to a sleazy feeling site. No need to encourage ‘em. * The links aren’t permanent. They go away after a month. [...]
[...] Yahoo! Search Blog ã?® Jeremy Zawodny ã?Œã€?自分ã?®å€‹äºº Blog ã?«å¤§é‡?ã?®SEOç”¨éš ã?—リンクを(金をもらã?£ã?¦)張り付ã?‘ã?¦ã?„ã‚‹ã€?ã?¨ã?„ã?†å•?題を WebGuerrilla ã?«æŒ‡æ‘˜ã?•ã‚Œã?Ÿã?®ã? ã?Œã€?ã??ã‚Œã?«å¯¾ã?—ã?¦ é–‹ã??ã?ªã?Šã?£ã?Ÿå??論を書ã??込んã? ã?Ÿã‚?ã€?ã?¡ã‚‡ã?£ã?¨ã?—ã?Ÿé¨’ã?Žã?«ç™ºå±•ã?—ã?¦ã?„る。 [...]
If search engines don’t like what Jeremy does, they can do whatever they will. It is not his problem that their software cannot distinguish between meaningful and unmeaningful links.
The use of the word “condom” is meant to imply that Jeremy is somehow irresponsible for doing his own thing, when in reality, it isn’t his fault that search engines use algorithms that are trivially duped.
This is the lamest “controversy” I’ve seen in awhile. Now people can’t just put up text link ads on their site? That’s ridiculous. Site owners are under NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER to add no-follow. Site owners should not have to do weird things in order to account for the flawed manner in which search engines rank sites.
“Link Condoms” really is an appropriate word haha. Who coined up the word in the first place anyway?
[...] By focusing on quality, you are bound to attract eyeballs, and with those eyeballs come links, and more eyeballs, and more links. Kind of a selp-perpetuating cycle. Like being #1 for a top key-phrase. By focusing on relevant, captivating content you are likely to get some of the best links you could. For instance, by making a dissenting decision, and informing your peers about it, you are bound to get noticed. When the Zawodny v. Cutts debate broke, we decided to go with the link condom, and then I posted about our decision on the company blog. The whole thing proved to be a learning experience, and we got additional play out of th ewhole commotion. Additionally, Jeremy even posted a follow up, devoting a few paragraphs to us, and a couple of links. Another major trend has happened in the SEO employment space. I count 15 independent blackhat SEO’s that have went to work for other corporations. The actual number must be closer to 50 or 60 that have thrown in the towel and went to work for the man. There are very few old time techless SEO’s left. [...]
[...] The text in the comment was taken from the last comment in the Jeremy Link Condom post. (a trackback from Greg Hartnett’s Blog) [...]
he shouldn’t be selling links. not at all professional!