So the buying and selling of links - and how much Google hates it - has taken center stage as of late. Text Link Ads, a company at the center of the Google jihad, has taken steps to defend itself, and more importantly its advertisers, against the search giant. From a recent e-mail:

... we have just uploaded changes to our marketplace that should significantly increase the privacy of your ad buys. We will no longer be revealing pictures or URLs to our users. We feel moving to a more private marketplace will prove more valuable to you the advertiser in the long term. This way your competitors, or other market players, will not have any access to which sites are selling text link ads. In addition to more privacy for your ad buys, we have advanced filtering that will allow you to find the ideal ad fast!

Too little, too late? Maybe. Had TLA done this a lot earlier, it may have helped insulate the company. TextLinkBrokers, in contrast, have always kept things on the down-low with extreme vigor. However, with tons of human editors on the case at Google, chances are most of the publishers on TLA are already revealed.

Labels: paid links