Text ads linking to linkfarms

December 14, 2004 6:00 PM

Looks like some users are using MeFi text ADs to post google linkfarms. Example: This site, and this one.
posted by shepd to Etiquette/Policy at 6:00 PM (5 comments total)

What's the policy on that?

It looks like the kokopoko user has been deleted, so I figure policy says no and these are old trash that needs to be cleaned up.
posted by shepd at 6:00 PM on December 14, 2004

BURN THE WITCHES!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:15 PM on December 14, 2004

that's lamerz. I think they changed their site after I approved it, because I turn down a lot of linkfarm spam sites.

What's funny is they get no google love from the site, since it's a redirect anyway.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:04 PM on December 14, 2004

Matt: I wouldn't be so sure of that, google no doubt follows the link while spidering, and I don't see why it wouldn't count redirected links just as heavily as plain A HREF='s.

You could stop them being of any use to google farmers by adding /adsystem to the Disallow section of robots.txt ofcourse.
posted by fvw at 3:05 AM on December 15, 2004

No google love comes from the text ads, I've run a bunch (just for the heck of it, every time someone said "donate to the site!") and it's not like Technorati or google or blogdex or any of those check link places ever go "metafilter links to YOU".
posted by dabitch at 5:14 AM on December 15, 2004