So lots of hoopla here, here and here about Text-Link-Ads' new Link Worth Calculator. Besides a great way to sneak in affiliate referrals (see the embedded referrer ID?), it's also been a great way for them to get some link-love from the unwashed masses. TextLinkAds (who seem to have an identity crisis around whether or not to include hyphens in their name or not… it's definitely in the domain, but it's not used consistently on the site… hello, marketing?) has been around for a while, but this is giving them a big boost. (Let's hope they learn from Chitika's mistakes.)
Not to throw any water on anyone's excitement about how much their blog is worth, but this post in their blog describes how the calculations are done. The first item states:
Traffic of your website – the lower the Alexa ranking, the higher the price. (emphasis added)
Um. Um. Alexa ranking? Hello? Read Are Alexa rankings relevant? to see why this bothers me.
So if you want bragging rights on the worth of your blog, just get as many of your friends to install the Alexa toolbar and surf your site with it multiple times a day for a few weeks. Bingo, instant rise in text link worth…
Listen, I know they don't depend only on Alexa rankings. I'm just surprised to see them trumpet it so loudly to the general public. Alexa is the SEO equivalent of a brown-paper-wrapped pornographic magazine. Sure, you'd like to believe that what's inside is real, but you know that there's a lot of airbrushing (oops, showing my age, I mean “photoshopping”) happening inside. I bet if you graphed sites based on their potential worth (someone write an app to do this) then you'd see a definite skew towards the sites that SEO types (who like to skew Alexa data their way) favor.
Sponsored Link: Hey, I've got nothing against Text Link Ads, so be sure to join today. It's good to have AdSense alternatives. Keeps Google on their toes.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.