Whoring your PageRank (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Okay, this has gone too far. Yesterday I received an e-mail from someone who wanted to buy some text links on my blog. I figured it was a humorous response to Google AdSense rejecting me.

No. He was serious.

I am interested in buying text link advertising promoting my internet pharmacy off of your website. The links would not have to be in a very prominent place on the website, as I am not looking for traffic from your site. I am looking to increase my PageRank in google.

(Emphasis mine.)

Does anyone else find this both amusing and disgusting at the same time?

On the other hand, I wonder what it was worth to him. :-)

Posted by jzawodn at June 27, 2003 02:50 PM

Reader Comments

# jim winstead said:

i got the same mail. it hit the digital round file pretty quick.

on June 27, 2003 03:25 PM

# Jon Gales said:

Maybe he should start a "drug blog" and get popular on his own. Lame and lazy SOB.

on June 27, 2003 04:03 PM

# said:

Corporate sponsorship of personal blogs....

on June 27, 2003 04:40 PM

# zombie said:

and so it begins...

on June 27, 2003 05:55 PM

# Jeremy C. Wright said:

Yet another reason Google's days are numbered. Heck, maybe the true relevance of SE's is numbered. After all, how different is a website from the internet?

If a website is a failure when users are required to search, why isn't the internet a failure for the selfsame reason?

on June 27, 2003 07:37 PM

# Wolfgang Flamme said:

At least they say what they want.
Compared to others that use referer, guestbook and comment spamming we should feel lucky in some way.

on June 27, 2003 08:33 PM

# Kalyan Varma said:

Why pay ? Just spam your blog with a text ad in every post of yours till date.

Voila.

Its not like MT is shashdot, where the posts get moderated. Hey infact, I think I should write a simple 10 line perl script using LWP to do it right now :D

Jokes apart, really amused to see what people do to get ranked in google.

on June 27, 2003 10:21 PM

# mmk said:

For a completely self referential trick, read this post by Kalyan. Muhahaha. :)

on June 28, 2003 04:22 AM

# Gerald Steffens said:

Offering Pagerank - an interesting business model. It's is not unusual to pay several hundred of dollars for some PR8 or PR9 links - per month. You may guess that this becomes highly profitable if there is a demand from one or two dozens of customers - so do not wonder when stumbling across all this php-, search- or counter-portals with PageRank 7+ and more or less decent but strange outgoing links ;-)

on June 28, 2003 04:42 AM

# Konduct said:

You are not alone, Google rejected my AdSense application as well. Does anyone else feel it is high time that the world create OpenRank(tm), OpenAds and an open search engine, as on par with leading search technology as practical? With all the brilliant open-source effort on compilers, databases and web servers you would think that a few quality FOSS search engines would exist. I have seen a few but nothing adequately mature. If anyone wants to team up let me know. Jeremy, you da man. =)

on June 28, 2003 06:59 AM

# Kalyan Varma said:

I hate MT, it should support threading for comments.

Anyway all i need to increase my page rank is, to put a link to this blog from mine. As mmk pointed out, this is why.

on June 28, 2003 02:20 PM

# Capz said:

I've got to give it to the guy: he's honest at least.

on June 30, 2003 06:02 PM

# Dan said:

Well at least I was honest. If anyone else would like to whore their pagerank as Jeremy so well put it. Just email me. I think if you've worked hard to bring value to your site, you should be rewarded for it.

on August 8, 2003 07:28 AM

# a said:

st00pid

on August 10, 2003 08:48 PM

# james said:

We sell high quality kitchen products for both home and commercial use.

on August 15, 2003 11:04 AM

# Kelly said:

Maybe he is getting pressure from his boss to get more rank.

"Maybe he should start a "drug blog" and get popular on his own. Lame and lazy SOB."
Haha

on August 29, 2003 10:12 PM

# free sex said:

on September 20, 2004 06:12 AM

# Scott Johnson said:

Judging by the above comment(s), it looks like somebody decided to just get that PR boost for free. Very sickening.

Cheers,
Scott Johnson
http://insane.com/

on September 18, 2005 06:40 PM

# Tommy said:

Ive had a lot of the same requests, I cant believe you didnt get accepted to Adsense!

on February 10, 2006 01:21 PM

# Tommy said:

I posted the comment above, please check out my site, its pretty cool

http://www.videocodesfree.com/

and dont send me and requests for page rank links!
lol

on February 10, 2006 01:24 PM

# Paul said:

I guess Google changed their mind then? And from slagging off the selling of Page Rank to hooking up with Text-Link-Ads who do exactly that?

Wonder how long it is until Google scrap page rank altogether, the idea of using it as currency seems to go against all their ethics.

Paul

on January 24, 2007 09:42 AM

# US friendly sportsbooks said:

Lol, soon every blog will be sponsored by Ebay.

on May 27, 2007 05:40 PM

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