I just wanted to let our publishers know that we have been experiencing huge increases of traffic over the past week and it has been causing our servers to have periods of lag. We are working on the issue and hope to have it resolved quickly.

An immediate solution for anyone that wants to make sure the lag doesn’t affect their site is to replace any file inclusion options you have on your site with static html ads.

* Regular text ads – use copy/paste option
* Rotating text ads – use the local file inclusion option

Again, we’re working on the issue and should have it resolved soon.

Thanks for your patience!

Do you think you are good at developing plugins for different blog and content management software? Then you might just be the person we’re looking for!

We are on the hunt for someone that can help us develop a LinkWorth plugin that makes publishing our different ad products easier for partners. We have the basic idea, we just need a specialist to make it all work.

If you are interested, please send an email to admin (@) linkworth.com. Reference “Developer Needed” in the subject line.

There has been updates to the Google AdSense TOS. This is important to LinkWorth publishers who use AdSense as a source of additional revenue. We posted before about how our ads do not violate their terms as long as you do not format them to mimic AdSense ads. It is still the same thing, just make sure your users can differentiate between AdSense ads and LinkWorth ads. If you have any question or doubt, don’t chance it, make them look different.

Here is a good article I read with more detail. You can move on to the JenSense blog to read further if you are interested.

Publishers have often complained about the rigidness of the AdSense policy that prevents publishers from running AdSense on the same page as another contextual ad program. So running AdSense & Yahoo Publisher Network on the same page during the same page view would be a no-no, but rotated 50/50 would be perfectly within the AdSense (& YPN) policies and terms. But not any more. Their competitive ad policy has gotten much, much tighter when they updated their AdSense policies today.

Their competitve ads & services policy was updated to this today:

Competitive Ads and Services In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

read more | digg story

I’m always hesitant to post something that might have been out for a while and I look like someone that is slow to keep up, but although others have posted about ChaCha, the human edited search engine, I think there are a lot of others who have not heard about it. So as the generic business guy would say, I’m going to do my due diligence and talk about it for those who are unaware. 🙂

Today a friend asked if I had ever heard of “ChaCha“. Obviously my first thought was the dance, but then when he said “a search engine”, I quickly pulled it up online. I noticed the normal search field and then two search buttons; 1. Normal Search 2. Search With Guide. Here is a snapshot:

So once you enter a search phrase, you can either use the “ChaCha Search” button and have typical search results returned, or you can click the “Search With Guide” button and you are taken to a page that has a left sidebar which is a chat window, then on the right there is a blank page, which is where the guides results will eventually appear. A guide, as they refer to them, is the human on the other end that is specialized in the particular category you are searching in. Looking at the ChaCha Underground, there appear to be thousands of guides over all the main categories. The guide then strikes up a chat with you and helps narrow down a few search results that they feel will meet your needs. I have saved my conversation so you could see my questioning and her answers:

Status: Looking for a guide …
Status: Connected to guide: KendraN
KendraN: Welcome to ChaCha!
KendraN: Hello
KendraN: How are you today?
You: hi kendra
You: i’m just checking out your site
KendraN: okay, what can I help you find?
You: so lets say i’m searching for “text advertising” … do you tell me sites? or give me results you think are bests?
KendraN: I would give you the link to the sites that has the best information
KendraN: Guides are supposed to give you at least three sites
You: Ok, so can you provide results for “text advertising” ?
KendraN: sure, just one moment
KendraN: These would be the type of sites I would give you and then ask if this was what you were looking for
KendraN: If yes, woot! We’re done, if no, I would clarify what you are looking for and search more.
You: How many live guides are available at any given time?
KendraN: I don’t really know, but probably hundreds
KendraN: There are alot of us
KendraN: We come online as we please
You: Do you volunteer to do this? or do you actually all work for the same company?
KendraN: We are considered private contractors
KendraN: We are not employed by them, but they pay us for the work that we do
KendraN: We are paid per time searching
You: Very cool. Now is the search database chacha uses actually their own or another engines?
KendraN: We have our own
KendraN: But the guides can use any resources we like
You: Where is chacha located? The home office I guess?
KendraN: I am not sure
You: I’m sure I could probably find it on the site

I asked how one becomes a guide but I was just referred to their website. From what I can tell, they are not accepting guides any more. It appears they have plenty and in order to pay all of these people, I would imagine they need to earn a good bit on advertising.

It’s a very interesting concept and it’s a little slower than just using a normal search engine, but it just comes down to preference. One good thing about normal search is it’s anonymous, so you can search for whatever you want and pick the sites you want. Using another human, although you’re not right in front of them, it’s not so anonymous. It also is slow and you are going on another person’s decision rather than you getting to select what you feel is best.

One of the more important aspects of any website to become an authority within their respective market is content.  Adding highly optimized content to your site, along with a strong, same themed linking campaign, is any advertiser’s road to owning their market in the search results.

LinkWorth now offers content development to Advertisers and Publishers who need the help.  If you are interested in well written, SEO friendly content for your site, contact support and we can discuss your needs and the costs involved.

Need traffic? Want permanent inbound links? LinkWorth’s Directory Submission service (a.k.a. LinkDir) is an easy way to drive relevant web traffic to your site and increase your link popularity for a nominal one-time fee. Whether you are looking for improved rankings or just need more visitors, LinkDir is a great add-on service that can help.

The LinkDir Directory Submission service will manually submit your website to up to 300 of the largest, most popular directories on the web using a variety of titles (keywords) and descriptions. We literally “hand submit” to each directory to ensure inclusion in the most relevant categories and we will even provide screenshots of the “registration complete” page at your request.

Perhaps most importantly, using the LinkDir Directory Submission service will save you a lot of valuable time. Considering it can take 10 minutes to submit to just one directory, it makes sense to outsource this tedious task to a team of dedicated professionals.

To add this service, inside your LinkWorth account look for the PRODUCTS menu option and the LinkDir option will be found. This is available for both Advertisers and Partners.

I happened across an article through a spam comment post, which led me to webmasterworld and their discussion on the subject. The owner of wikipedia, Mr. Whales, calls out Google results are SPAM! He goes on to explain how his software is the wave of the future to combat companies like Google and their automated algorithmic methods that were easily manipulated by interested parties of their respective markets. He explains how his software (wikiasari) will be edited by a human before it is allowed within an index.

So there are many angles I could go on this, so lets dive in and hit them one at a time:

1. Initially, I was like, he might be on to something. A way for humans to have the say so on if a document deems the right to be listed well. Then I quickly thought of how well wikipedia does and there is so much spam plugged into those documents all over, it’s not even funny. Then the idea of corruption for those who have the power. I’m a pretty honest guy, but I was on DMOZ editorial staff back in its inception. I was very fair to anyone that submitted, but when it came time that I had sites that made money, I was probably too fair to let them in as quick as I did.
2. I then visited the site and it initially looks just like wikipedia. So what exactly will be the difference? I was hoping for a sample of results, but either missed it or it didn’t exist yet. I also noticed that in the article, Mr. Whales took a few shots directly at Google, yet, when you visit their mock site, it’s laced with Google AdSense ads on the right panel.
3. Finally, this guy speaks as if his model is fool proof. It’s definitely what you want to see in a leader to the free world, but obvious holes in his story make me giggle a bit more than get excited about the project. Billions of legitimate documents and you’re telling me they will all be judged fairly and accordingly by a real human initially? And what happens after time passes and 50,000,000 documents need to be reviewed again to ensure all is well? You hiring a sweat shop to do this all for the statistical data that makes humans feel better knowing it is being done?

In summary, this debate is quite an interesting one. There are some smart people over at webmasterworld quizzing some great points on the subject. Hey, regardless of what my post here sounds like, I would like to see Mr. Whales get this into production. There is nothing better than a little competition when it comes to company giants like Yahoo & Google!

I think Mr. Whales needs to speak with LinkWorth on how we can provide his new Wikiasari with the proper advertising system to differentiate himself further from the search giants. 😉 John Whales, give me a call (Ron Wicker), and I can tell you about the perfect platform for you that would be pay per performance without the ads taking up side bars or head & foot locations.

LinkWorth would like to tell all of our customers that we have greatly appreciated your help, business, criticisms, suggestions and most of all, your friendships. While we have not grown close to everyone, it’s just a matter of time before we get to know more of you. Those who we have gotten the face time with, can all agree a lifetime of memorable stories came from the experience. Other than running a business that all of our employees love, we wanted to make it a place that our customers love as much and we get the chance of making the entire experience a bit more personalized compared to most online services. So Thank You from the bottom of our hearts for making LinkWorth 2006 a great year and we hope that has turned into great years for each customer individually.

The New Year 2007 is set to make record breaking numbers with our new products, improved website, upgrading of product usability and our growing sales staff. Our lofty goal for 2007 is to increase our average partner payout between 100% up to 300%. In addition, we have set our goals to increase overall sales from our current average of 4% per month to over 10% per month. With the sales come the increase in partner payout.

• Average Partner Payout 2006 – $256.00 per month ($3,072 /year)
• Projected Partner Payout 2007 – $512.00-$1,024.00 per month ($6,144 to $12,288 /year)

We realize LinkWorth is more known for a way webmasters can monetize their website(s). There is no secret that if you randomly select 100 web users and ask them if they had a website, would they rather earn money to pay for that website or would they want to put more of their own money into bettering the website, over 90% of these random users will respond with “earn money”. Due to this fact, focus on our partners have increased for the new year.

Of course our Advertisers will always be a focus as they bring the financials into our market. The new year will bring new and better functioning products, along with a much needed usability upgrade to our backend.

We are very excited about the new year and hope our excitement can pour over into your lives and accounts as time goes on.

Happy New Year 2007 to Everyone!

It’s not secret that if you read Matt Cutt’s blog, there’s a lot of barking about how they urge the use of “nofollow” links if it is an advertising link. Most people think it’s a weak way for them to fix what they say is a problem, but they say it is meant to say you don’t trust the website you link to, which if you think about it, you can trust a paid link as much as a link that is not paid.

Well, this leads me to something interesting that I noticed today on Cutt’s blog where he is talking about metrics of comparing Firefox with IE. He lists several metrics websites and links to them and only one of them he has a “nofollow” link attached to it, “StatCounter“. The others, OneStat and Extreme Tracking are not selling links which makes it obvious the nofollow is due to the selling of links. So if all he barks is true about the nofollow means he doesn’t trust StatCounter, I would only guess it’s because they sell paid links on their site for big bucks because they have a PR10. Now, their link popularity is through the roof with around 2.5 MILLION backlinks because of people placing their code on their homepages, but still, according to the Goo-Gabbing, they’ve marked that site as selling links and Matt doesn’t want to trust their site from his blog because of it.

Now hopefully you’re keeping up, because based on that, these untrusted sites are said to not pass known sold links link strength. So armed with this info, I decided to check through these obvious paid links to see how they were doing. The first link is for http://www.proboostgold.com/, which is a PR7 and has shown backlinks from statcounter. The pattern held true where each link I reviewed, showed statcounter as one of their first listed backlinks, which from my experience, the strongest backlinks are usually shown first. . .theory, but evidence tends to prove it.

To sum up my research, I’ve often considered a lot of the matt cutts blabbing a bit of scare tactics. He obviously gives good info, but things he says “DON’T DO THIS WE’LL CATCH YOU!”, I think when it comes to trusted vs untrusted and paid vs unpaid links, this interesting find seems to prove it’s a google oversight, technical glitch or the proof of a bunch of hot air being blown at webmasters.

I happened across Ms. Dewey, the viral marketing site for Windows new Live Search.  As I am typing this message, she is a couple windows behind tapping on the glass saying “Hello. . .hello, are you going to type something in here?”

The obvious fun is to try to get her to do crazy things like change clothes, take them off, call her names, enter their competitor names and products, all for her reaction.  She has usual stances and actions she takes or says, but I’m sure there are many actions we just have to dig out.

The craziest I have gotten is when I entered “MSN Search”, she pulled out dynamite and yelled of spam, spam alert and blew it up.

Give her a LinkWorth go and let us know anything exciting you got her to do.  Just don’t waste too much of your time on her.

Very clever viral marketing.  It’s along the lines of the Subservient Chicken, where you enter what you want him to do and more than likely he’ll do it.