Button, Button

There was a Twilight Zone episode called Button, Button where a stranger gave a man, Arthur, an empty box with a button on it. The stranger explained that if Arthur clicks the button, someone somewhere in the world would die… and Arthur would be paid $200k.

• What are the odds that Arthur would be picked?
• What if you cannot determine who died or was hurt as a result?
• What if the offer seemed irristable?

I’m going to stretch the analogy for Linkstar, the company behind what I call link spam.

• A representative from some company (presumably Linkstar, but I’ll never know) contacted me with an offer to sponsor my blog.
• In exchange for a small sum of money (much less than $200k!)
• I would have to put ads on my site that build link quality for viagra and vitamin spam sites.

Unlike poor Arthur, I didn’t take the deal. However, had I been offered $200k….

An investigative reporter, Dan Tynan, contacted me because he was writing an article about Linkstar. I’m impressed at what he’s learned.

As far as I’ve been able to determine, Linkstar isn’t doing anything illegal or particularly shady. But its penchant for secrecy is troubling. As a general rule, I don’t do business with any online company that does not clearly identify its principals or provide its actual place of business – and I don’t think other people should, either.

Can running the wrong kinds of ads on your blog or Web site hurt you? Absolutely.

Read Tynan’s two-part series here:

Part I: The curious case of Linkstar Media

Part II: Bloggers beware: Bad ads can come back to bite you

And like Alanis’talent, there is some controversy around my claim that link spam is indeed spam. Here’s the question in a nutshell… Can it be considered spam if someone pays you to post a link to a spam term? Is it advertising or spam?

It’s the latter. It may not look like the Nigerian-viagra-big titted whores-HYIP spam you get in email, but it is spam. When someone asks you to post a link on your blog that links to ads about Viagra or [insert your favorite spam phrase here], it’s spam.

But, they’re going to pay me for the link, so it’s advertising, right?

Wrong. It’s spam. Instead of cluttering up your in-box, they’re cluttering up your — and my! — search results. Every time you link back to a page, you are enhancing a site’s page ranking. Better page rank means higher search rank. Over time, it has the insidious effect of crowding out other legitimate pages. If you scan the terms that the spammers are using…

… you notice that they’re normal words that link to spam terms. The next time you do a legitimate search for vitamins you may find a spammer’s page about Propecia (which, come to think of it, I could use ).

Will it work? Yes, over time. When enough people link back using these terms and URLs, it will have a cumulative effect. I think it will be very difficult for even the brilliant developers at Google to weed out these spam links via a search algorithm.

Therefore, please, just say no to link spam.