I know this is ‘old news’ but I feel I must bring it up for the sake of those who may still think they are getting ahead through the selling of link space. Text link space to be more precise.

Some time ago toward the middle of last year something begin to happen in the search rankings and page rank through Google concerning blogs who apparently were selling text links ads or using a thrid party to sell for them. PR began to drop and some sites were disappearing completely from the search results. What the….?

Google will penalize you if you keep using the text link advertising method to earn a dollar on your site/blog. They consider this a form of manipulation to gain certain positions in search results and have since pounded us bloggers who use link ads.

I just today, finally, removed Text-Link Ads from my (once popular) coffee blog. It reached a 6/10 once and leveled off to a steady 5/10 in PR. If you have visited you’ve probably noticed it now ranks as a 2/10 pr. It is just sickening and I had to sacrifice that $150 a month just to try and gain some rank back. What a shame but I do have to admit I was noticing a couple of my sold links had nothing to do with coffee. That played a large role in the removal.

Take it from me, don’t do it unless you could just really care less about anyone visiting your site through the use of Google search.