Talk:Affiliate marketing/Archive 1

cash-to-cause
I read an article that looks like it's from an affiliate marketing website. They said that amazon.com and others have stopped using "cash-to-cause" affiliate marketing. The authors seem to feel that Amazon has wronged them by not using their services. Queue tiny violins...now. But what I can't figure out is, what's cash-to-cause?

On an unrelated note, I like the implication in the original entry that sort of implies spamming doesn't annoy people anymore.

What is cash-to-cause
It's explained on onecause.com's site, the central player involved in the story you mention. I don't understand the rationale for cutting them out, as they are just another type of online community who also shop. Sometimes merchants forget that cutting off affiliates also cuts off the revenue they bring in. Regards, Peter.

J Feka
I've attempted to make the original article a bit more precise in terms of who is being compensated and how. I also added the historical roots of the idea, the finder's fee, and expanded a bit on why someone might use this marketing technique. I've also added some more current reference to the practice of spam.

J Feka

Affiliate Marketing Page Listing
Hi, How do we get our legitimate and innovative network listed on this page with the others? Please advise.

Thank you,

Gary Marcoccia

garymarcoccia at Yahoo.com


 * Hi Gary...  the best way would be to make your network notable by increasing traffic and customers.  The site's PageRank is 0, Alexa traffic ranks you as about the 500,000th most popular site, as opposed to the other US networks listed, that are in the most popular 500 sites on the web (or 6,000th in the case of Performics, which now that I think about it, makes me want to delete it's link).  Post your site to Open Directory Project and Yahoo directory, that'll be a good start  LordMac 18:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * thanks Lordmac. I certainly am an anti-spam advocate so I apologize if it seemed like I was link spamming! we are a brand new network.. but we have a combined 12 years of affiliate marketing experience. I do feel that by including our network on this page it adds value to it...we have a tool center that is one of a kind and free to affiliates. we'll work on improving our PR and Alexa rank and be back :) !! Thanks for your time.

BTW, performics definitely should be there.. and so should shareasale. you should also have a link to AbestWeb.com on that page. You shouldnt solely base everything on a site's PR and Alexa Ranking.

Thanks again, Gary from AvantLink.com

- I don't see why avantlink.com shouldn't be listed. You have to start somewhere. My only fear is that this becomes a collection of external links which is not what wikipedia is meant to be. Maybe we need a separate page or we move the aff. network links to the talk page. Peterkoning 17:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

External Links 2
Hi all. I think we need to adopt a very strict policy on external links in this article due to its connection with the advertising world. Every fly-by-night affiliate marketing company is trying to get their link in here. I'd suggest removing all commercial and forum links. If someone wants to find a forum on this subject they can google search. The site owners should pay for their own advertising rather than have wikipedia do it for them. Monkeyman(talk) 15:45, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I have removed all commercial links from the external links section. I don't think you should call affiliate marketing companies "fly by night" though. A lot of people put hours of hard work into what they do in this industry. It is actually wiki's lack of taking this industry seriously by including more then just one article on it that might be causing people to have to add so many external links. I will be happy to work with you to increase the amount of information on this industry for wikipedia.

Richard A. Lewis Founder ReturnonAff iliate.com

Removing all the links is not necessary. Some of the links have been there for quite a while with no complaints. There are many other people who police this page and the fly-by-nighters and "MFA" or Made-For-AdSense type of sites don't last long. Other sites such as [http://www affiliate-software-review com www Affiliate-Software-Review com] provide a useful resource for merchants. I would also argue that ReturnonAffiliate.com rises above the fly-by-nighters and would support it's inclusion, or do you Richard concede that it's in the same category? Peterkoning 16:28, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * There are tons of sites out there that could be included[http://www affiliateinformationonline com], but limiting external links to the DMOZ site seems most fair.

Peter- Well I just want to make sure that it is fair and inclusive. I read the earlier comments by Gary of AvantLink and the problem I see is that their needs to be a separate article on "affiliate networks". Not everything is appropriate as a "general" affiliate link. I agree that wikipedia should not be used for commercial purposes, but when covering an industry such as this one it is impossible to not have commercial links in some way. When you write an article about ebay or google they benefit from the link. I believe the external links should be used for general topics and that we need to push for a few stub articles on issues that broaden out this topic a bit. Let me know what you think. Richard


 * Hi Peter/Richard. Please review External_links when you have some time.  It offers guidelines as to when an external link is inappropriate.  [[Image:Monkeyman.png]]Monkeyman(talk) 17:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I read the "links to avoid" and don't feel that returnonaffiliate nor the very unique feature comparison resource of affiliate-software-review.com are to be avoided. Re the affiliate networks article that might open a can of worms as there are hundreds of affiliate networks and in that case it would be quite an effort to maintain the article as every affiliate of those networks will try stick their network link in there, which already has happened here a few times but they were dealt with. Peterkoning 17:26, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Peter- How do you sign up to be a editor on wiki if say you just wanted to maintain affiliate related pages? I am pretty familiar with what is genuine and what is not in the community and could keep things as clean as possible. Thanks.

Richard


 * When should I link externally is good reading. We want more content, not more web links.  Merely adding HTML links is not growing this encyclopedia.  Richard, more content -- please. --Perfecto  00:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Perfecto- I will start writing more content on the industry tomorrow for this site. I'll start by fleshing this article out a bit. If you don't mind me naming names and networks. There needs to be more history and background in the article otherwise it just seems like it didn't evolve from anything other then the concept found on the back of comic books.


 * Carsten- Monkeyman. You are wrong in this case. The site becomes more and more important to the Affiliate Marketing Community. You would probably like it, if it wouldn't be about Marketing (although people are not talking all business there). FYI: The site has maybe 2-3 Ads and all on the homepage. The whole internal community pages and forums are Ad free. Same is the case with any emails send to members (alerts).
 * For a Site dedicated to Affiliate Marketing does it have so few Ads that I even noticed the fact that they are absent.
 * I think those are very important factors that need to be considered before a quick and wrong decision is made in this case. --Roy-SAC 05:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Perfecto: I hope I did not mess up your plans. I made quite some additions to the page before I got here into the discussion page to add a message about it. Feel free to go over it and change/add things if I missed anything. The more (correct) Information the better. --Roy-SAC 04:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Massive Content Extension
The Content about Affiliate Marketing was very weak and some very imporant aspects and developments were missing.

I added the blocks "The Wild West", "AdWare" and "The new Web".

I also added two important external links. One to Affilipedia (Affiliate Marketing Wiki) and to Revenue (Important Print Magazine of the Industry).

I updated the Return on Affiliates Link because it stated "Affiliate Forum" which it is not. It's actually an Online Community for people in Affiliate Marketing (Affiliates, Merchants, Networks and Outsourced Affiliate Managers). It offers a Forum (dah), News, Blogs, Private and Public Interest and Discussion Groups etc.

I did not touch the existing Content of this Article because I don't know if this will be an issue for some, but I think it should be restructured. --Roy-SAC 04:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup and fixing of Grammar Rhobite. Good job (English is my second language, but I get better at it, especially since I write more ;) ). --Roy-SAC 07:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Return on Affiliates
Rhobite: "ReturnonAffiliate can be read without registration. Like for Forums is a user required to post and connect with other people."

Rhobite: "I really don't think this should be linked. The forum and blog are not readable without registration, and the site's owner did add the link to wikipedia"

Public for all none interactive parts such as:

www.returnonaffiliate.com/search.php

www.returnonaffiliate.com/browse_listing.php

www.returnonaffiliate.com/events_list.php

www.returnonaffiliate.com/public_journal.php

Login Required for all Interactive Parts such as Personal User Blogs. Special Interest Groups and Forum. --Roy-SAC 06:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

FYI: Public Blog entries can be read. See Links to bloggers on RoA Homepage. I wanted to add the Link myself when I worked on the content of the Article, but he did it already which is of course a mistake (he did not know that).


 * I'm not sure that I understand you. You agree that the potentially useful features of the site are not accessible without registration, but you still think the site should be linked? Generally we shouldn't link to registration-required sites, unless they are irreplaceable resources. This is especially important when we're dealing with such a field such as this one, with a reputation for unethical behavior. (edit conflict) Please don't insert grammatical errors into things I write. Rhobite 06:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * To help you a little. Here are screen shots of the pages you complain about that there is no public access. The Blog Link in the top nav is not clear enough. It should read "MY Blog". As I already stated. Pubic Blog posts are accessible without the need to register from the Homepage.

--removed by cumbrowski 06/08/2006--


 * To avoid any misunderstandings. I am not affiliated with RoA. I am a Member supporting the community (for FREE on my own time). --Roy-SAC 06:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * They only have a couple hundred posts? How could this possibly be a noteworthy site? Rhobite 06:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * This is the public Forum. Then every Group has it's own forum and every User too. Those are not public. I believe that the public forum is a nice "add on" but could go and left to Sites like ABestWeb. It's not really what RoA is about. The Inter-Connection between people is the main purpose of the site which is hard to do without a profile. "Hey IP 123.432.123.321, how was your day? Do we know each other?... Yes, I was IP 213.132.212.312 yesterday, remember?" (this is meant ironic, but I believe you get my point). I hope this clarifies things and makes the link stay. I will remove the Images and links to them in a week or so.


 * I noticed in general that there is a severe shortage of Information to the general topic Internet Marketing here at Wikimedia. I made already some suggestion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate#Make_Affiliate_Networks_its_own_Article I believe one reason for this is the fact that most Wikimedia Veterans to do have much knowledge about this Topic. It's not a minor topic anymore that can be ignored and worse, left out of Wikipedia. Internet Marketing is now as professional and at least as big as print Marketing (snail main, magazine ads, catalogs etc.). I know you do not favor the idea, but I think we should try to get some professionals and respected authorities in that field to write about those topics. You will be surprised, but I believe that a lot of them would love to do it (for free and without requesting a link to their site or their name on it. Money is not everything for People of the Marketing Industry). I made also some comments and recommendations for some cleanup of the Category Internet advertising and promotion which is a mess today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Online_marketing). --Roy-SAC 07:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Last comment. Do you know Yahoo Groups? You can Compare RoA with Yahoo Groups that require that you have a Yahoo Account to interact with the Group? Also read my comment to blocks above where RoA discussed his link with user:monkeyman, it's a big plus for a site in this industry. --Roy-SAC 07:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

External Links Peace Offer
The issue with the external links here seems to become an obsession beyond reason. I doubt that the decision about those links should be left to people that now a thing or two about affiliate marketing and its community. It is clear that this does not mean that any commercial spam can add their junk here. The sites selected should be representative and also not pure profit driven. What does that mean? Sites whose purpose and sole reason of existence is the gain of profit and not the contribution of value to the (specific) community should not be listed here.

Sites (related to Internet Marketing) whose purpose is to contribute to the (Marketing) community are most of the time not completely free of Ads. People of the community would not even expect that and rather send comments to the site owner and recommend where he should add Advertisement on the Site without interfering with its usability. It is also not a problem if an income is generated from operating such a site. The important characteristic of a valuable site in the Marketing Industry in particular is that the owner makes the decision to sacrifice profit for value to the community from time to time. A prime example is the business model of Google. They rather not add Advertisement to some of their Services which would generate several Million Dollars for them, if it reduces the usability and usefulness of their service.

To remove any shadow of doubt of the positive intentions behind adding those external links and proof that this is not about SEO or Spamming, add those links that they contain the "rel=nofollow" attribute which tells Google to Ignore the Link as a "vote" and thus not has any impact on Page rank of the Site whatsoever.

The best thing Wikipedia Developers could do is to add automatically the "rel=nofollow" tag to ANY external link automatically. I am new here at Wikipedia and try to contribute in areas I know something about from which Internet Marketing is the one that will always cause a clash with other editors that are against any form of marketing whatsoever. If you believe it's evil, fine. I don't. I believe in evil marketing, but that is something completely different.

You could help me out here and tell me where I should go to recommend the addition of code to the Wikipedia Engine which would solve so much of our problems today when it comes to real link spam with the sole purpose of SEO. --Roy-SAC 08:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea. Just not sure where it should be submitted. Peterkoning 17:08, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Affiliate-Software-Review.com more commercial?
Why is affiliate-software-review.com seen as more commercial than a few forums that contain affiliate links? It has no ads and is a unique comparison engine to help merchants compare affiliate software platforms. 85% of the people that edit pages support respecting inclusion of this site. You are in the other 15% - please defend your reasoning. Peterkoning 04:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Peter, Affiliate-software-review is a commercial site. You are selling a service: "To order e-business coaching (US $140/hour) right now simply click on the Paypal "Add to Cart" button ".  Your site requires registration to view the comparison data.  "Another goal of affiliate-software-review.com is to provide you, the user, with a customized experience on our network of sites."  Wikipedia is not an conduit for advertising.  The spam problem here at Wikipedia is insane, we have tons of people trying to include their sites as external links into articles every minute.  You are probably better off paying google or yahoo to advertise your site for you.  [[Image:Monkeyman.png]]Monkeyman(talk) 13:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * And a poor service too. Most of the bigger Names in the business are missing. That link could go in my opinion. I did not touch it, because I am still careful with existing content (that lasted longer than a week). --Roy-SAC 16:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Roy-SAC - which ones should be added? The focus is not big networks but if you know some affiliate software platforms that could be added please let me know. Thanks. Peterkoning 17:31, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Peter: If you concentrate on Software or In-House Affiliate Program Services alone fine, but ShareASale does not fall under that category. Its a network like Commission Junction/BeFree, Linkshare and Performics to mention the biggest. But there are tons of networks out there today. Btw. stop by ReturnOnAffiliate.com and say hello :) --Roy-SAC 06:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I have removed all external links because it appears none of them add anything of value to this article. Barrylb 16:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Monkeyman, Re commercial aspects of the site I agree with you. However, I must demand that you retract your comment re "sending out spam". I use Aweber which is a double opt-in email management system and newsletter readers can opt-out anytime.Peterkoning 16:52, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * You're right. I shouldn't have said that without proof.  I'll sign up for your newsletter, unsubscribe a few days later and see if I get anything from your network.  [[Image:Monkeyman.png]]Monkeyman(talk) 18:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Barrylb you are corrrect they were about Affiliate Marketing which has of course nothing to do with Affiliate marketing --Roy-SAC 17:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Just because a site is 'about' affiliate marketing doesn't mean we need to link to it. We would have endless pages of links if that were the case. The problem is that the links need to add significant value to this encylopedia article, which they do not. Barrylb 17:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * my comments in this paragraph referred primarely to the link to the Affiliate-software-review Site were we (Monkeyman and me) had the rare pleasure to agree on something (partially) :). Sorry Peter, but I also believe that the link to your site did not fit into this article. It would may-be appropriate in an article about Affiliate Program Software or In-House Affiliate Program.


 * Different Story with the other Links which were either extending Wikipedias content (Affilipedia) or to the most important Affiliate Marketing Communities and Resources which hardly fit in any other Internet Marketing Article. "Affiliate Marketing Community" maybe, but that article does not exist. There is no better resource than other people that have the experience and are willing to share it in public places like forums or interactive community portals. --Roy-SAC 06:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

External Links 3
Remember, whether the links are relevent is not the issue here. WP:NOT a web directory. We should only link to sites that contain encyclopidic content, references or offical sites (if the article is about a product.) --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 16:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

You just deleted the Wiki which is nothing BUT about Affiliate Marketing. You deleted the link to an encyclopidia which is as close as you can get to "encyclopidic". You guys are doing a terrific job. Congratulation. --Roy-SAC 16:57, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I haven't deleted anything. Please be more specific with your comments. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 17:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I didn't have a problem with that wiki link - I did once I think, but the criteria keep changing so it's hard to know what should stay or go. We seem to have a steady state for a while and then someone comes along and wipes them all out along with a spammer link, which makes it appear that the long-standing ones are in the same category as spam. Peterkoning 17:07, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry JiFish this one was directed to Monkeyman (<- the "some persistent people" have a name and a user btw.) and Barrylb --Roy-SAC 17:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I re-added the links. Damn now I am late for work (which has in part to do with Affiliate Marketing) .. to be continued. --Roy-SAC 17:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think that was appropriate behaviour given this discussion. Barrylb 17:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

We need some way to resolve this issue. I have reviewed External links to get some ideas. We do not necessarily need any external links but if we do, the most appropriate external link to have in this article would seem to be a link to a directory and nothing else. It would need to be a neutral directory like Google directory. There are so many possible links "about" affiliate marketing that a directory is likely the only option. Please state your thoughts on this suggestion. Barrylb 18:51, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 23:16, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

An Affiliate Program Directory would be the worst place you want to link to. Most of the Time are the Listings Affiliate Links and the Directory gets commission for any Affiliate send to Networks or Merchants and even more money when a Merchant is refered to a Merchant. The Sites currently in the list (= the comparison site gone) are all very valuable. I don't use AssociatePrograms.com and RevenueSource.com too much myself and prefer ABestWeb.com, but that is a personal preference. You could deeplink into AbestWeb if you want to. There have different areas From Anti Parasiteware (Spyware / Adware). Alert Foums to report suspicious behaviour. Developers Forums with "How to guides". Merchants have their support forums there etc. etc. I use it for years and haven't seen all the thousands of pages there.

Return on Affiliate is pretty new but rapidly growing. It's like yahoo groups for Marketing amateurs and professionals. None commercial. I finally got to know who some people I communicated with via email look like :) Very positive trend.

Revenue is simply the most important print magazine of the industry. Like MTV and Music Videos.

Affilipedia is clear.

I can not speak up about the other two forums. Know them, yes. Important? Based on the opinion of a lot of highly respected authorities in the industry, yes.

You will have a hard time to find other important affiliate marketing sites out there which are not commercial and not at least 2 competitors that demand to be referenced to as well for fair competition. I want to keep the article clean. When you add a junk link to it, I will remove it and also explain in detail WHY. Working in the Internet Marketing Business did have the affect that I know a thing or two about it. I would not consider myself a trusted authority or something like that. I leave that fame to others. --Roy-SAC 03:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Roy-SAC, please read my suggestion again. I said it is important to have a neutral directory. No commissions etc involved. Have a look at the Google Directory link and come back to me. Barrylb 07:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that a single link to a directory is the best way to go. The competition to get commercial links into this article will be unbearable.  We'll all be wasting hours patrolling this article for external links otherwise.  [[Image:Monkeyman.png]]Monkeyman(talk) 13:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I put my vote in for linking to a directory. I think that if there is ever some kind of neutral industry or government site that provides oversight of Affiliate Marketing programs and other such things, we could (and maybe should) link to them, just like we would like to a government watchdog organization.  However, I still think we'll have to patrol this article and delete links all the time.  Anca 18:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no neutral affiliate marketing directory. Anyone who knows enough to make a directory has monetized it and put in their affiliate codes, or added AdSense, or something similar. Google's directory is copied from DMOZ and DMOZ is not necessarily impartial. I suggest no links - lock that out - and we all just focus on making the articles better. People who truly want to improve the wikipedia articles should be allowed to do so without fretting over external links.Peterkoning 22:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That is something I considered also. DMOZ is not perfect but it is probably the best choice out there. I suspect we could have a lot more trouble with external links if we have nothing at all.. Barrylb 15:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Affiliate marketing is a big enough industry that there are detailed and neutral papers written about it. Companies like Forrester Research and Gartner Group have surely written abou it.  Perhaps what we can do is reference THEIR papers, when available, though often a Forrester or Garther report requires shelling out $$$ for the privilege of reading it.  Anca 22:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I suggest people try to improve the articles instead of being so focused on linking externally. Write some useful content and then give the reference in the article. Peterkoning 23:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Excellent point, which seems to reflect the thinking in the external links guidelines. The desire to add external links often reflects a deficiency in the article. Barrylb 07:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Roy your link to Affilipedia is not acceptable. It is a site primary devoted to supporting the affiliate marketing industry and that puts it in the linkspam category. Barrylb 14:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Content and Quality secondary?
With exception of Rhobite and me did nobody anything to improve the quality of the content for this article. I am also actively providing Ideas how to improve the content at Wikipedia about the whole industry and not just the one article. I am currently making efforts to find a solution for the general problem of link spam at Wikipedia. How do you like my Idea (it’s plastered all over in various Discussions at Wikipedia and even in the Spam project Talk WikiProject_Spam. Nobody cared of course, being too busy with blindly deleting stuff without checking it at all. Did it occur to you that there are people that actually care about the content, people that are also actively contributing to this project, spending hours of their spare time? I get the feeling that the meaning of “community “and “Open” gets forgotten from time to time. --Roy-SAC 16:57, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I like your idea of the no-follow. I just don't know where it would be submitted. You have my vote! Peterkoning 17:04, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * 1. I had a look at your idea but I am not in favour of it. The problems with external links goes beyond Google PageRank issues. We still need to have appropriate links in articles. People would still place links to their sites on Wikipedia even if it did not boost their PageRank. I also don't think we should be messing with how search engines operate. There would be major implications for the entire internet in doing what you suggest. Barrylb 17:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * it would certainly reduce the issue a lot which would be very helpful --Roy-SAC 17:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm having second thoughts after reading Barrylb's comment. I think most link spammers are not doing it for pagerank, as this has become less a factor in Google's algorithms, from what I have read. But who really knows anyway? I suspect we would get more success if we could agree on clear definitions and examples of what should be in and out re external links. Peterkoning 17:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The automatic addition of the "no follow" tag to external links should be doable in no time at all, but the gain from it by the Wikipedia community of volunteers wasting countless hours every day would be huge. The loss for SEO's on the other hand is as huge as the gain for Wikipedia (as long as Google is dominating the market). Another solution is to display external links as text only like http://www.wikipedia.org (not clickable). Users need to copy and paste the URL in the Browser to go to the site mentioned in the Article.


 * Page Rank is still the main factor for Googles Ranking of Sites in it's Index, but the determination of how strong a "vote" of a link is that is placed on Page A to Page B got improved. Google considers now a lot of Information about Page A and B and their surroundings to determine the "value" of the link. Wikipedia is considered by Google a "trusted" Source and a Link from Wikipedia to a another Site is a strong (pro) "vote". This is the reason why some advertisers try so hard to add their links everywhere.


 * Wikipedia must reference and refer to outside sources like any quality "authority" regardless of the topic. Wikipedia can not just reference to itself all the time and risk to make false information "true" that way. All you need is to reference to it all the time and it becomes true because people start believing it. Very dangerous.  The need for external references, either to prove a fact or refer an interested user to quality resources to learn more about the topic will always be important. This is cause of the whole debacle. How to reference where needed and/or appropriate and where not. Not every editor is always an expert about every topic to be able to make an educated decission if the referenced resource Is valuable or not. It's very similar to the Issue DMOZ faced some years back. Google considered a link in the directory to your site a highly related link placed there by a trusted authority (Human Editor). Your Page rank could jump a whole point because of a single link in an popular DMOZ Category. You can imagine what happened and what the ODP volunteers had to deal with on a daily basis. When Google eventually diminished the value of DMOZ and links from it, the whole problem was going away. It's still not a bad thing to have a link in DMOZ, but it is not as important as it used to be. SEO's get the same and better results via other efforts that are much easier to accomplish and in a much shorter time.


 * Reducing the value or benefit gained by an external link at wikipedia willalso have the affect that its simply not worth the effort to get a link added at Wikipedia where you need it . If the gain is to little compared to its cost, people won't do it. Simple as that.


 * I see Barrylb is having fun again. I will re-add for the xx time the links (excluding the software comparison site which is not valuable) --Roy-SAC 03:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Barrylb, Peterkoning, Monkeyman, JiFish, Rhobite, Perfecto If you like the idea of "de-linking" we could use this disputed article and it's links as "Pilot". De-Link all external links, add the comment to copy and paste the URL and see what other people have to save. Let other editors and admins know. It will be an issue for unexperienced internet users, that is true. For that reason do I believe that the "no follow" tag the better solution is. At least it's something as temporary solution until we find out how to get a development request done here at Wikipedia. Any comments and opinions about this are apreciated --Roy-SAC 04:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree with this. The problem is not the increased pagerank of the linked pages. I don't care about that. The problem is the links are not informative. (That doesn't mean they might not be useful, mind. But remember, it's not our job to provide links. That's why we link to directories instead.) --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 14:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Lastest Full removal answers the question. Ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to present our first de-linked article and pilot Affiliate marketing ! --Roy-SAC 04:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I just re-ordered them so don't panic :) Peterkoning 07:37, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I do not like the idea of de-linking. If we have a link on Wikipedia, it should be clickable. You are breaking the way the internet works otherwise. Please re-visit my suggestion above regarding link to a directory. Barrylb 07:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Further to this point: We are trying to build an encylopedia article and it should have appropriate links attached. These 'de-linked' links are still not suitable links for this article. They should not be there. Remember the end goal is to have a proper article, not to worry about whether it boosts anyones search ranking. Barrylb 08:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * 2. I did not blindly delete the external links. I looked at each one and determined they were not of sufficient value to include on this article. Barrylb 17:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I also don't think Pagerank is the issue. The issue is that Wikipedia should provide articles which are useful to readers, and which are not influenced by commercial interests. Wikipedia actually had a discussion about adding nofollow, and decided against it; see Nofollow. The external links in this article have been problematic for a while. Some users have added links to their own sites, or sites they use to promote their business. Right now it's better to keep the DMOZ link and remove all other links to affiliate sites. Rhobite 22:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)