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by sandycheeks 4427 days ago
We've noticed a decrease in tier 1 advertisers over the last 18 months. We get a million+ uniques per month and are very picky about the ads we run. The decrease in tier 1 has been small businesses who have become concerned that their ads may be misconstrued as 'link buying' and will cause them to be penalized in Google's search so all that is left for us are the large brands. Many of the small businesses had been advertising with us for over five years.

We've been considering BuySellAds because of the high quality of the ads we see them run on other sites.
2 comments
toddynho 4427 days ago
What's scary about that is that your advertisers' perception seems to be hurting your business, but for something that (by all reasonable imagination on my side...) shouldn't actually be true.

I'd love to see if we can help debunk your advertisers' fears.

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sandycheeks 4427 days ago
Yes, that is the problem. However, I know that at least one of them was penalized for using TextLinkAds and stopped advertising with us because they decided to adopt a scorched earth policy in an attempt to have manual penalties removed. They simply tried to remove all possible links to themselves that they had paid for.

I'm afraid the issue is not as black and white as I'd like it to be.

I do not believe that Google would intentionally punish sites for buying legitimate advertising.

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junto 4427 days ago
That's scary. Do Google really penalise companies who buy advertising from other sites other than via Google Adsense?
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camillomiller 4420 days ago
You can't make a connection direct enough, but well, yeah, that happened and happens all the time. Penguin update is all about that. They may be sincerely thinking that penguin stops direct link buying so that you have better results or more natural results. The outcome is that shitty results are still all over the place, good content is not king and if you want to advertise without any risk you go through Adsense. That is particularly true in smaller markets where Adsense is the only possible player unless you're big enough to have different deals with classic media agencies (those who manage all kind of ads -- print, tv and web.
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toddynho 4427 days ago
For the sanctity of the business world we live in I sure as heck hope it's not true.
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