I set very specific rules, though I broke them slightly

Just for arguments sake, I am going to say that 1 aggregator link is worth 20 visitors. I am going to look at the total benefit over the next 3 days.

Lets take a look at the poll results, and compare the results to the actual results.

[poll=2]

Sanjaya

This got me a fair amount of traffic (comparatively speaking) , but no backlinks, thus there wasn’t a huge amount of coverage for the keyword compared to the amount of searches.
If I had written something relevant, it might have actually gained a few links.

Joost

A few will certainly be shocked at so little traffic on this keyword. One of the reasons is because of the amount of blog posts covering the topic, thus supply exceeded demand, and my content quickly disappeared from view.

Twitter

Twitter was a hard one to analyse, because I get a fair amount of traffic for Twitter related keywords. I had close to 200 unique visitors related to Twitter over the last 2 weeks, but very little of it was due to Technorati directly, and most of it was for content posted before this experiment.

Dell

I can’t even recall why Dell might have been searched for at the time of my post, I don’t follow Dell news. Looks like the people searching for Dell weren’t exactly keen to click through on what was obviously not Dell news, but it is surprising that what I would look on as a “money keyword” wasn’t being splogged by someone.

Habitaquo

This is the Spanish Language SEO contest – not much traffic but a registered link from an RSS feed widget. I also had a comment left which is more than I received from other keywords.

YouTube

This one is interesting – whilst I had no traffic from Technorati, I gained lots of long tail search traffic simply because the word was in my sidebar.
If you have content that is even vaguely related to YouTube, it would be good to include the word on every page, even if it is a nofollow link to an affiliate product.

Dana Vachon

Not a lot of search traffic, even though there was relatively little competition for the keyword.

Myspace

A very similar situation to YouTube – no Technorati traffic, but some from Google, caused by just having the words in the sidebar.

Harlan Ellison

Hardly a blip on the radar

Iran

Absolutely no traffic at all, almost suggesting that the search volumes weren’t real.

Habitaquo Was the Clear Winner

The reason it was the winner was because it provided me a link, which was worth 20 visits. It might not have been a permanent link, but it was registered, and the site it was on wasn’t a splog.
I broke the rules slightly mainly because of this one link – it created such an inbalance and thus I left things running a little longer.

It is obvious that people are not creating splogs for the terms that most people are search for (at least the top terms). You won’t find that conclusion in any of the “official reports” that get published about splogs.

Continued Testing

The UMBC eBiquity Blog a couple of months ago published the top 20 keywords being used by spam blogs. Now if those blogs were really spam blogs, and they don’t really define a spam blog, then they have to be getting their content from somewhere, based upon those specific keywords.
Some of these are actually money phrases, so it will be interesting whether will will pick up some traffic, or whether the blogs are blogging purely for the SEO benefit.
Another thing to note is that if these are the most spammed keywords, then this post will disappear fairly fast, as I am going to use the keywords in my tags.

adult auto big buy california cancer card casino cheap college consolidation credit debt diet digital discount dvd equipment estate finance florida forex free furniture gift girls golf health hotel info insurance jewelry lawyer loan loans medical money mortgage new online phone poker rental sale school sex small software texas tits trading travel used vacation video wedding

One thing I find remarkable is that all of them are single words, and I am sure some of those words should be joined, for instance “credit cards”, and they are all money phrases. Do people search for money phrases on Technorati? Maybe Technorati is just a holding station to recycle content on these keywords.

Anyway no poll this time, but I will publish the top 10 results in a week or so.

Feel free to leave a comment if you want to try to predict the winner. Remember about supply and demand.

Lots of controversy over V7N and their new contextual links program.

• Darren questions the ethics
• Matt Cutts has “Laid into Them“
• Graywolf Delves in Deep (read my comments there btw and the ones by Jeremy Zawodny)
• Carsten Cumbrowski has made a post I agree with on a link being a pointer, not a vote, or at least should be. I still don’t agree with him on the Wikipedia move as that punishes webmasters who deserve the “vote” as it is currently counted both for positioning and duplicate content. One option is for a couple of Google engineers to spend a week of 20% time fixing their software by adding a voting system for links.
• John Andrews gives his strong views on Matt Cutt’s current attitude:-

Today, Matt’s post was again in-your-face authoritarian. Matt is likely millions richer than he was when he started way back when I tussled with Google for the first time, but I’m not seeing as much “smarts” as I would expect to see. In Matt’s post, he speaks of V7N’s advertising system, and says things like :

• It seems this is what Matt was really up to at the last Google Whipping Session / SEO Convention

V7N Contextual Links

From what I have read so far, this service is very similar to using the alinks plugin for WordPress – that is used by thousands of bloggers with links to Amazon, Clickbank etc.

Here is what Darren wrote about Alinks last year.

Rachel also points out a helpful WordPress Plugin – Auto links which will automatically link to URLs when you mention certain keywords. This is especially handy if you find yourself mentioning site’s regularly. It also has the ability to turn keywords into Amazon searches (with your associate/affiliate ID) which some will find handy.

There doesn’t seem to be any moral problem with using it, and the V7N system is effectively the same, but rather than hoping for an affiliate sale, you get the money up front.

The requirements seem to prevent specific disclosure as Darren does on his blog, such as (aff)

As I wrote about recently, the Adsense Referral Link program effectively prevents you telling your visitors that you earn money if they download the software, but you are allowed to give a hearty recommendation.
As an example Darren now uses the phrase “Recommended Money Makers” for his affiliate links, but in the past I seem to remember he had “Affiliate Links” or something similar – that would indicate earning money from them, which would be against Adsense policy for the referral unit.

Thus the rules for V7N and Adsense are effectively the same regarding disclosure, but are for totally different reasons.

There is however a difference in regards WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing)

Adsense allow you to express an opinion about the products, V7N I think would prefer you not to even mention them.

There is nothing within the V7N terms preventing you having a general disclosure policy for your blog, and even having a general disclosure with each piece of content you publish.
With Adsense Referral Units, the only way might be to have a general disclosure, and then not place them as advertisements. Maybe they will clarify that sometime.

Many might think that $10 for a link is not a lot of money, but it is just one text link on a page without having to do anything for it.

Google Situation

If Google really don’t like paid links of any kind, they should put their money where their mouth is and add a clause to the Adsense terms banning Adsense on sites which contain paid links.

Lots of web masters would probably react to that by removing…. Adsense, especially from large sites with horrible click-through rates.

Is it Worth Using V7N?

I noticed that they are mainly looking for blog inventory. They are going to get bundles of it – I am also sure lots of forums with 100,000+ pages are going to be pulling on the leash for this kind of offer.

I do foresee that this will also put pressure on other networks to increase their rates, such as PayPerPost. Sorry guys, but in many ways for most of your bloggers, this is a great deal.. but they do go hand in hand.
That being said, PPP is much better value for advertisers, as they do get a review out of it, which to be honest is part of the charm.

I have seen people state that this is too cheap – honestly by not having to do any work it isn’t.

You can buy up old domains that have a large number of content pages and just flog the inventory.

The funny thing is, for many bloggers, just like email marketers, search is not the primary source of traffic, and probably never will be.

I am sure a lot of people will be wondering

• Do they have negotiable rates for advertisers
• Do they have negotiable rates for people with lots of inventory
• Where is the affiliate program?