Another debate around whole text link issue has started up, this time involving O’Reilly the highly respected publisher of IT books. To catch up on the in-depth debate visit Tim O’Reilly’s own blog at:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/search_engine_s_2.html

What I really like about this discussion is that Tim is an extremely smart man, he’s also not a search marketer which gives him an objective business perspective. In writing his blog he’s done some thorough research of the whole text link issue himself, and does a very good job of weighing up the issues for and against, in terms of how they generate revenue that supports his valuable websites, but also the fact that they can be frowned upon as a gaming technique.

His main consideration is why shouldn’t he monetize his assets if it helps keep them online which is of more benefit to internet users, than if they couldn’t afford to run them at all?

It’s definitely an open-ended discussion, and even with the contributions from Google employee Matt Cutts explaining about using the rel=nofollow attribute one that is likely to continue.

Is Google being clever with AdSense?

To create a sense of irony, on the right of the page in the morning was a Google AdSense contextual advert displaying an ad for a company that was specifically selling text links to boost PageRank. When I went back later in the day the AdSense ads had changed, they now displayed an advert for the Financial Times and underneath one of Google's own ads. Check out the screenshot.

What does the FT have to do the a debate about text link spam on Tim O’Reilly’s blog?

If you remember a few months ago the FT themselves got involved in a very similar debate, involving the hiding of links in the FT website.

http://www.search-engine-war.co.uk/2005/06/hidden_links_on.html

Uncanny?