Ok, I’ve heard a TON of complaining and whining about Text Link Ads changing their URLs. People are upset, think it was a dumb move, and all sorts of other criticism all because they either didn’t know to or were too lazy to use a redirect for their affiliate links. I’ve posted a comment over at the epicenter of the whining comments (in response to John Chow’s recent post about the issue) but I figured I should scoot over here and post it here as well. This was somewhat rushed because I’ve got to head off to the rehearsal but I have a hard time not correcting misinformation when I see it in mass quantities like this.

Come on people!!! Think about it for just a minute… have you noticed Text Link Ads anywhere in Google’s SERPs lately? No, didn’t think so. They have been targeted by Google as selling links, which they do, and now penalized for it. So, everyone that linked to them (affiliates this is you) was linking out to a penalized site. So, that hurts your rankings, which then makes your links even less valuable and then TLA loses business. Plus, if it hurts your rankings to link to them, they’ll also have fewer affiliates.

Basically, this allows people to participate in their affiliate program without Google being able to easily identify them. All you people that didn’t use redirects or jump pages, take it as a lesson but don’t act like it’s some huge injustice.

Now, I’ve had an article about affiliate jump pages sitting in my drafts folder for weeks but it’s apparently time to pull it out and publish it. I’ll add that to the list for next week but for now, consider all the implications and repercussions of a move before you form an opinion on it. Believe it or not, TLA made this move for the sake of their publishers as well as their business.

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