Crenk

Back in early November of last year, I preempted the launch of Spottt. Spottt is a free link exchange between sites via a 125 x 125 widget. Spottt is developed by the guys over at Adbrite, so they have a product that needs to work and actually launch into something worthwhile. Since Adbrite has had a lot of VC Funding, they will be really expected to not just launch a product for the sake of it, and actually turn it into a commercial entity.

This brings me to the all important point, is Spottt actually going anywhere? Currently, the site is so simplistic and has a lot of competitors doing exactly the same thing. So where is it unique selling point? If I was the VC in Adbrite who put in a slice of the money, then I would expect an out strategy for Spottt and within a year or two at the most. Will this actually happen? and what features are really missing from Spottt or sites like Spottt?

It is huge news today around the blogosphere that Google PageRanks of large sites have been hurt. DailyBlogTips had some of the first info on the topic and most of the key information was from Andy Beard. Sites penalised are as follows:

Here is a list that I gathered with big blogs that supposedly lost PR on this issue:

• Engadget (from 7 to 5)
• AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
• Problogger (from 6 to 4)
• Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
• Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
• Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
• Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
• Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
• Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
• JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
• Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)

Update: It looks like mainstream websites that were selling links were also penalized:

• Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
• Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
• Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
• Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
• SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
• Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
• New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
• Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

Andy Beard thought the drop was because of text selling which was reported about a week or so ago. This turns out not to be the case.

Duncan Riley over at Techcrunch has reported that Google didnt drop the page ranks because of the selling of text links, but because of link farms. Links farms are where each site in the network provides hundreds of outgoing links on each page of the blog to other blogs in the network, in some cases creating tens, even hundred of thousands of cross links.

This all comes a week after the linking characteristics of Techcrunch was analysed. Where it was reported that 1/3 of all Techcrunch outgoing links where to related Techcrunch sites. Hence, link farms do explain why the Techcrunch page rank hasnt changed, but the Crunchbase ranking is now at 0.

These changes will affect a lot of blog networks that survive on text link ads and related sales that depend on strong Google page ranks. A drop from a PR7 to PR4 should really affect traffic too heavily but it will make the tough job of selling ads much tougher. In the coming months and years I think we will see a lot of small blog networks starting to struggle and trying to find another way to survive.

About 4 months ago now I saw a decrease from a PR4 to a PR1 and I found it difficult to work out why, and about a month ago when Google announced that selling text link ads would bring in a punishment, I finally found out why.

I came across a very interesting site yesterday which is a twist between a link “million dollar homepage” and link group. It is the1000links.com. The site is very basic and quite a good idea. There are 1000 links slots on the page, obviously. The first like was sold for $1 and then the 2nd for $2 and so on. All new links are added at the top of the tree, so in the end if you purchase a link for cheap then it will end up at the bottom of the page. All links purchased will be displayed for 5 years and once the site has been indexed and received a Google Page Rank it will be a great deal more inviting.

Make sure you head over to The1000links and check out this unique spin on a very good idea.