I am not sure it is harmful for all new websites, but for mine it surely was and i stopped using it. And i think it can also harm old and established websites if it’s used in high quantities, because it does one thing that Google really hates: dynamic links and many times, unrelated.
Also it gets the website tons of links and if it had only a few before, Google will surely penalize the website. I know this, because i used it and got all the website penalized and then i also used it to test other websites and they also got penalized, too.
So it seems natural linking still remains the best option to rank a website high and keep it there.
I think the only way Coop Ad Network could be used is in low, growing amounts and for old websites, if they’re in those categories, not in ‘Other’, so they get related links.
November 29th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
I’ve been doing some research into this recently, and have noticed that this coop ad network is working extremely well for competitive search terms. Personally I find this very frustrating as it looks like spam through and through.
Sites are able to get thousands of links which aren’t topically relevant, but Google isn’t discounting them - it’s allowing them to rank better. This is happening for big money terms.
I don’t want to participate in this scheme because I personally don’t agree that it’s abiding by Google’s guidelines - however, it is frustrating that Google are allowing this to have such a big impact on the SERPs.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
I’m sure Google is trying to fight this, but it’s not quite easy, i think.
Google seems to lose terrain in the war with Blackhat, spammers and those kind of link builders.
More worser, it seems that more and more Whitehats are being penalized because of Google’s algorithms updated to fight Blackhat.
June 7th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
When did google had winning part of terrain in the black hat seo?
I’m sure never …
There will always be a way to trick the sistem and Google nor other search engine won’t be able ever to stop this.
About whitehat penalization, haven’t heard of this … maybe you can give us site examples ..