Link Hoarding: How Google And Money have Changed the Linking Game

Nick — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:01:36 +0000

This post has been in my drafts for a while but I figured this would be a good time to post it, thanks to Arrington’s recent post.

In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of companies and blogs seem to be linking less and less to external websites in favor of directing traffic to their own sites, networks, or affiliated sites.Remember when Techcrunch used to link to the actual startup when they covered it? These days it’s usually a link to Crunchbase instead (the “stats” page for that startup). They are effectively funneling their links through their own network to keep more of the users attention and revenue.

But who can blame them? Even Google is getting wary or losing its traffic to Wikipedia. Why do you think they’re launching Knols? (Notice the irony in that last link?) Even Yahoo has recently made changes to keep more traffic on their own network – the SERPS are now littered with more links to their own properties.

Why is this happening? I would say a combination of 2 things: a desire to hoard more attention (and revenue) and long term consequences of Google’s pagerank algorithm.

Firstly, the web is super saturated with content – there is an overabundance of information and new sites launch every day (see the 30,000 new blogs about “making money online”). This leaves the existing players scrambling for attention and relevance. As these new sites start eroding mindshare, everyone is looking for ways to maintain their own networks’ traffic (and especially if there’s VC money behind the blog/blog-network!)

Bloggers are also becoming more frugal because they are now much more aware of a link’s worth – in actual dollars.

A brief history: 1. Google’s pagerank algorithm equates links with votes. 2. More links/votes = better rankings. 2. Ad networks (TLA, etc.) monetize the value of these links for rankings. 3. Publishers became aware of a link’s worth. 4. (Now) Publishers realize that link equity is (somewhat) finite and they may be better off hoarding the user or better monetizing that link’s value.

While the days of “free link love” are not necessarily coming to an end, there does seem to be more reservation in distributing out links these days.

More recently I’ve come across a lot of statements like “but I don’t want to waste my pagerank juice on this link, can I get a link to my site instead?” Links and their monetary value are now much more tangible.

Google’s Pagerank and value allocation has helped create this monster. By protecting its business with things like bastardization of nofollow, its paid-link witch hunt, etc. they have only added more layers of complexity to linking.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the web is evolving – and fast. Relevance, links, link value, attention, search engine rankings – everything is changing – and so are the linking patterns across the blogosphere.

What’s your perspective?

No related posts.

Google Ads Unstoppable

Nick — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:52:49 +0000

I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog lately – thanks for sticking around – I’ll try to catch up and start posting more regularly (hopefully better stuff, too).

Google just announced the launch of Ad Manager, leveraging their previous acquisition of Double Click. It’s kind of a big deal and it will only further strengthen Google’s grip on the internet ad market. That’s unless of course people eventually become weary of Google’s “house of candies” (think Hansel and Gretel), but I doubt that.

There’s some talk of Google reaching 90% market share (Skrenta, Graywolf , JC) and that’s not an unlikely scenario (think that’s crazy? gas is $4.00, gold is $1,000 / ounce. We live in crazy times.) Now that Ask has thrown in the towel and Yahoo and MSN are heading toward an awkward bureaucratic marriage, there’s little to stop Google.

As someone who’s had a lot of experience with PPC – Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing – let me present the case from an advertiser’s perspective.

Having worked with all 3 SEM platforms, I can only see Google’s market share growing and Y/M’s dwindling in the future – Adwords beats the other 2 hands down. Yahoo’s Panama was a step in the right direction, but they’re still SO far behind. (and Adcenter makes me want to tear my hair out).

Here’s a recent example of why Adwords is SO far better than Y/M combined. In February we ran ads in all 3 systems for (let’s call it) “red widgets.” We setup campaigns in all 3 engines with the same bid amounts.

Volume

Impressions and clicks across each:

Adwords: 852,242 impressions, 48,950 clicks
Yahoo SM: 220,204 impressions, 8,293 clicks
MSN Adcenter: 33,213 impressions, 2,985 clicks

As an advertiser, which system do you think deserves (by far) the most attention and effort? Besides – the issue of volume is only the beginning.

Ad approval times

Adwords ads are usually approved instantly – this makes a huge difference for split testing and running offers that change regularly. We can rotate ads and split test 10 different versions in the same amount of time it takes for Yahoo to approve even 1 ad (Yahoo usually takes a few days to approve ads).

Microsoft is even worse in this regard. I’ve had ads waiting for approval for 3 weeks. I’ve had to get Adcenter reps on the phone at least 3 times, and the last go-round took 5-6 days just for the ads to start showing. When asked about the ridiculous lead times, the rep said “we’re just picker with ads, this is for your benefit” – typical MS BS.

Usability

When you’re working with a large number of ads, you really see the difference in loading times when you’re switching between ad groups, writing new ads, changing date ranges, etc. Google is enormously faster, auto-logs you in, and is far more intuitive and easier to work with than the other 2.

So let’s recap. Adwords sends 6 times more volume than YSM (and 16 times more than Adcenter), approves ads instantly instead of making you wait 2 days to 3 weeks – this combination of volume and speed lets you split test way faster – and is by an order of magnitude easier to use and more intuitive – plus it’s optimized to load faster.