Someone from a company called ZTMC recently contacted me about running paid advertisements on one of my other websites.

I already run Google AdSense ads on that website, and thought that the introduction of another ad block wouldn’t be that big of a deal as long as it wasn’t obtrusive, fit well into the site content, didn’t mislead users, etc.

So I was initially open to the idea.

I mean, hey, they wanted to pay me a few hundred dollars per month, up front, just for putting a few links in the footer of my website – who wouldn’t want a piece of that action?

But then I did a little checking into ZTMC, and I am very happy that I did. It seems that ZTMC.com runs the “Digitalpoints Advertising Network,” a pay-for-linkage link-farm that pays webmasters with a high Google PageRank to link to other, lower-ranked sites. This scheme increases the PageRank of the lower-rated sites, resulting in more traffic to those sites.

The only problem with this scheme? It’s expressly forbidden in Google’s Terms of Service, and participating in schemes like this will get your website blacklisted from Google Search Engine Results pages faster than you can say “SERPs!”

From the Google’s “Webmaster Guidelines” :

Paid links
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

  • Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the “<a>” tag
  • Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

And wouldn’t you know it, the ZTMC ads don’t contain the “rel=nofollow” directive in their links. However, as astutely pointed out by one commenter, the link back to Digitalpoint itself is using rel=”nofollow,” which is OK as far as Google is concerned.

How’s that for nerve? They sell links that they know will destroy the PageRank of the hosting site, as well as the linked-to site, yet they keep the link to their own site clean and pristine.

The forums are full of people who are suffering the effects of ZTMC – just have a look around.

Here’s a guy who experienced a pretty significant drop in traffic as a result of adding ZTMC ads.

I drop my PR from 5->3 and lose all my Google Search Traffic, lost of 16 000 visitors/day.

I removed the ZTMC links and asked for a reconsideration request that I received 5 days later.

From what I’ve been able to gather, he was lucky to receive re-consideration in just 5 days – many other people report that it takes months for re-inclusion.

Here’s a guy begging for reconsideration after removing the links.

“Dear Google,

In my ignorance I accepted a request from the Marketing Manager of ztmc.com wanting to do some DigitalPoint co-op link exchange scheme on my website but at the time fooled me into thinking it was a legitimate way of their company just advertising on my site.

Under their advisement and to the best of my memory, I uploaded files ad_network_274.php, ad_network_ads_272.txt and display.php to the root of my website and forum. I then placed in every page of my entire site so that the ads would display.

If this form of advertising was a factor in me getting penalised then you should know I no longer participate in this co-op link exchange and no longer have their ads on any of my pages including the root page.

I have learnt my lesson and as an honest author I will never participate in such schemes again and will never sell links that can affect SERPS.

Sincere apologies for breaching the Google guidelines.

Kind Regards,

Mark S.”

Here’s a guy summarizing what he knows about the company.

The DP co-op is a link farm. Apparently a lot of people felt Google’s wrath because of their participation. I would stay away from it. Far away from it.

This guy told ZTMC about the problem, and they didn’t seem to care.

IDK, when i cancelled they I told them cause they are killing me rankings and their response was “ok”

lol, not kidding..

It’s important to note that Google doesn’t state that all paid links are bad – on the contrary, they expressly say that paid links are a valid part of the internet economy. Instead, they say that only those links designed to to influence search engine ranking are bad. Paid links should benefit readers, not game search engine rankings.

I’m going to stay far, far away from ZTMC. And if they contact you, I recommend that you do the same.