Re: FFA Pages

From: V. Campbell <v.campbell_at_websponsorzone.com>
Date: Thu 21 Dec 2000 10:51:29 -0500

ANDREW SINCLAIR <andrew.sinclair_at_moreover.com> WROTE:
> Well in my experience, FFA links lasted a couple of
> hours before being bumped off the list. So your
> likelyhood of picking up an extra inbound link or two
> is very limited (and limited further by the fact that
> many of the FFA pages you submit to will not be indexed
> by the search engines). One more thing to consider is
> that search engines such as Google also factor in the
> "popularity" of the linking page, so a link from a
> popular site is more valuable than a link from a site
> which has fewer inbound links (and how many people are
> linking to FFA pages?).

I would also consider that, if I were *running* a
search engine, I would consider FFA pages to be a form
of spamdexing. Maybe not a severe form, and probably
often done with fairly innocent intentions, but still
an attempt to undermine the real idea of link
popularity, which is that other people liked the site
enough to recommend it. So I would expect that the
major search engines would have rules in their
relevance calculations to ignore link popularity
involving links on known FFA pages (many of which seem
to be hosted on the same domains.)

The main result of submitting to FFAs is probably just
the inevitable large amount of spam for at least the
next several days. The one time I tried it, I received
something like 60 emails just overnight, with, "Thank
you. This is to confirm your submission to our FFA
page. Here are some advertisements we want you to
click on." So the whole idea seems to be just a way to
generate an excuse to send you spam - i.e. it allegedly
isn't unsolicited, since the ostensible purpose of the
emails is to "confirm your submission," and there is
apparantly some fine print on the submission page
stating that you agreed to receive such
"confirmations."

And more on-topic for this list, I would definitely
*not* get into FFA pages from the excuse-to-spam angle,
either. The whole thing is deceptive, the recipients
are likely to be surprised and annoyed at the high
volume (except, of course, those who already know the
deal, and use a free thow-away account that they will
never check), and I really wouldn't have much
confidance in the "confirmation" excuse really standing
up. It certainly won't prevent recipients from sending
spam complaints, and could be a bad move
reputation-wise. I also vaguely recall seeing an
affiliate program contract that allowed email
newsletter links, but specifically prohibited links in
FFA "confirmation" emails. And it could easily
irritate any sponsor.

--V. Campbell

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Received on Thu Dec 21 2000 - 09:51:29 CST