I’m not surpised you are, lots of people are.

There is a distinction between the selling of text links and a sponsored review.

I don’t view that review as the selling of text links. I wrote that review based on my honest assessment of their program. How I linked to them had nothing to do with anything, it was in my gift, they didn’t specify that I had to, they didn’t ask. It simply maded sense to link to them in context as I would do when writing about anyone else.

The funny thing is that before that review was written, I’d already discussed them elsewhere about a week or so prior, albeit not as in depth or as critically here

http://www.yackyack.co.uk/bidvertiser/bidvertiser-monetizing-a-blog/

To clarify, had you approached me and said, “rob, I’d like to buy a text link with the keywords blah blah blha” then the likelihood is that I’d decline your request.

Had you approached me and said “Rob I have this product that I’d like you to have a look at and give me your opinion on and I’ll pay you for your time” then I’d probably have a look at it and make a decision.

1000′s of websites review products and goods out there on the Internet. Many are paid too, be it via commissions or whatever other form of compensation they happen to recieve.

Google have paid links all over their website, as do Yahoo, Business.com , Live.com, Ask.com. Google even have a premium spnsor type page whereby people have paid them money and are then flagged up as a good reason to use adsense or adwords, case studies even.

Read this story here

http://www.blogherald.com/2007/11/17/google-selling-links-for-1995/

Then visit this page here

http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/success_stories.html

Techcrunch use thankyou pages to thank their advertisers

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/02/techcrunch-sponsors-thank-you/ for their patronage, again using plain text or anchor text links. Can you see any reduction pagerank for them?

The bottom line is that Google have gone OTT on this one.

I’m really confused now. At http://www.yackyack.co.uk/blogging/bidvertiser-review-sponsored/
the first sentence you wrote was “This is a sponsored review of the bidvertiser @advertising program@” and “advertising program” is a direct link. The link is text, and earlier in the sentence you said the post was sponsored. I guess I don’t understand.

Thanks for that, comments from people like yourself are always welcome

Your traffic can be measured in thousands a day and you can still have PR3. And when I am posting this comment, I don’t care about this page’s PR completely. It’s a good post which is worth leaving a few lines .

Which led me to believe that Google was putting a hit out on Pay Per Post or other sponsored review sites, which is part of why I wrote that article asking whether Andy Beard got a raw deal. You’ve already written about why other factors should determine popularity… I’m just empathising, really…

Sounds good, please let me know when its up and running, I love a challenge to a misconception or 3