Warning to Swedish affiliates - Expressen paid links now nofollow

[3jokers]

Many Swedish affiliates have bought a text link from one of Sweden's largest newspapers Poker - Poker - Spela Diskutera Pokerspel| Expressen from the right column. Note that these links are now NOFOLLOW, and expressen refuse to pay back.

I just bought a link for 19k SEK (around 2.5k usd) and didn't notice the change to nofollow. They didn't say anything about it. What a scam.

[sirtiner]

To bad man but i cant believe you paid that much for a link, such a crapy "newspaper"/site.
how long was that for? a month, 10 years (kidding)?
Anyways, you really think that the link would push you up on google even if it was DOFOLLOW, i mean the link is like a whole sentence.

My guess is that you will get alot of visitors this month since they have a good number of visitors everyday, would be fun if you could tell us how it went after your link time is up.

[3jokers]

Well, I will try to get my money back. The link shows on every poker and gambling related page, that's why I thought it was a good deal if it was dofollow. But now it's just a waste.

[Michael Martinez]

I don't know anything about that site but if the links still send you qualified traffic, it's not necessarily a bust.

As Google puts pressure on more sites to use nofollow, people who buy links are going to have think outside the PageRank and anchor text box (which is pretty small anyway). Links can be great advertising tools that drive traffic in many verticals.

[Jeremy]

I don't think it's a bust at all. If nothing else it will be a great media buy experiment. The nofollow does suck though. I'd be pissed too.

[chaumi]

There's a lot of thought around that being no follow does not lose all of the SEO advantages from a backlink

At the very least you may get benefit from increasing your natural link profile ( remember if links were being generated organically you'd expect to see a mixture of different types - ie different sources and no follow/do follow)....and you can bet that Google will be expecting to see that type of diversity.

[Michael Martinez]

Google says it does not associate nofollowed links with their destinations in any way. They do subtract PageRank from a site for using nofollow, now.

[Lovina]

I'm pretty sure this deal is for at least 3 months right?
In 3 months you should be able to land at least 1 fairly big casino player and you should not have any problems in getting the 19K SEK back.

But I agree, I would be pissed if I bought the link and they later on switched to a nofollow link.

[3jokers]

Thanks for the reply guys. Well, it will be there for 5 months (unless I get a refund) so I should be able to see if was a good buy after all. Might have to change the title text from online casino guide to something more eye cathing, maybe "Get the largest casino bonuses online, click here!"

[PTC]

so you see no value now? that is your opinion, the price of advertising is likely not based on your opinion.