Paid link checker, anyone?
February 3, 2010 5:30 AM Subscribe
How do I know if a site has paid links? Is there a trusted paid links checker out there?
I don't know of anything like this; when in doubt, assume that the link has been paid for and then use your own independent judgment to determine if you rate the product in question or not. The easier way might be to seek out those sites that do not accept advertising or paid links. Think of the publishing world -- every month, magazines like Cosmopolitan and GQ endorse beauty products, clothing, perfume, etc., and those products are often also featured prominently in ads within the same magazine. Compare that to a magazine like Consumer Reports or Cook's Illustrated, which has no advertising and can rate products honestly.
posted by proj at 6:12 AM on February 3, 2010
posted by proj at 6:12 AM on February 3, 2010
The definition of a paid link can vary. So lets broaden it a bit to say a link given in exchange for something else (as it could have been obtained by providing a reciprocal link or maybe it is an affiliate link for example).
Here are some general things to look for:
-The quality of the site it links to. Yes this is highly subjective but if it looks like it is linking to a spam site or a squeeze page or something like that, your warning flag should go up.
-Look for the telltale signs of affiliate links. Most are pretty easy to spot. For example, say you're on thissite.com and they have a link to a product or site that is thissite.com/go/productname that is the first sign it is an affiliate link. It will most likely take you to a PHP redirect page that either loads the affiliate cookie (to cloak your affiliate link) or redirects you to the affiliate URL. Make sure you look at the URL of the site you arrive on--many times with affiliate links you can tell they are such because they'll have something like "?aid=32487&?sid=banner" or something to that extent. For Amazon for example, here is a post about the format for their link and next time you see a link to Amazon on AskMetafilter, look at the full URL--you'll see their affiliate ID in there because they have a script that rewrites all Amazon URLs to include their affiliate ID.
-Look at the position of the link on the page. Many "paid" links are purchased for SEO reasons so they have a backlink from a credible site and thus don't need to be very prominent and are often stuffed below the fold of the page somewhere less visible. The funny thing is Google actually looks for this now and if they see a bunch of unrelated links down there they penalize the site so jokes on them.
-Look for funky redirects--this often indicates an ad server is being used.
In general, you can't catch everything and there are some really savvy methods of cloaking things and whitelabel affiliate programs where no affiliate link is even needed for the site to get credit. Thus, you need to just have your personal alert filter up at all times. Has the quality of the site historically been high? Do they appear like they know what they are talking about and provide concrete evidence of why something works if they are directing you to a specific product for example?
The FCC/FTC (forget which) just implemented new blogger guidelines requiring people to disclose sponsored links/reviews however there are MANY websites outside of their jurisdiction which collectively went "great! less competition!" and still operate under false pretenses.
In general the best you can do is look at the whole picture and ask yourself, "does it seem too good to be true, and if so is there ANY way this person could have a vested financial interest in asking me to perform an action?" Keep in mind an action could be anything as simple as providing your email address to grow their list for later marketing purposes in exchange for something free. If the answer is yes, you alone have to weigh the risk vs reward.
posted by Elminster24 at 11:18 AM on February 3, 2010
Here are some general things to look for:
-The quality of the site it links to. Yes this is highly subjective but if it looks like it is linking to a spam site or a squeeze page or something like that, your warning flag should go up.
-Look for the telltale signs of affiliate links. Most are pretty easy to spot. For example, say you're on thissite.com and they have a link to a product or site that is thissite.com/go/productname that is the first sign it is an affiliate link. It will most likely take you to a PHP redirect page that either loads the affiliate cookie (to cloak your affiliate link) or redirects you to the affiliate URL. Make sure you look at the URL of the site you arrive on--many times with affiliate links you can tell they are such because they'll have something like "?aid=32487&?sid=banner" or something to that extent. For Amazon for example, here is a post about the format for their link and next time you see a link to Amazon on AskMetafilter, look at the full URL--you'll see their affiliate ID in there because they have a script that rewrites all Amazon URLs to include their affiliate ID.
-Look at the position of the link on the page. Many "paid" links are purchased for SEO reasons so they have a backlink from a credible site and thus don't need to be very prominent and are often stuffed below the fold of the page somewhere less visible. The funny thing is Google actually looks for this now and if they see a bunch of unrelated links down there they penalize the site so jokes on them.
-Look for funky redirects--this often indicates an ad server is being used.
In general, you can't catch everything and there are some really savvy methods of cloaking things and whitelabel affiliate programs where no affiliate link is even needed for the site to get credit. Thus, you need to just have your personal alert filter up at all times. Has the quality of the site historically been high? Do they appear like they know what they are talking about and provide concrete evidence of why something works if they are directing you to a specific product for example?
The FCC/FTC (forget which) just implemented new blogger guidelines requiring people to disclose sponsored links/reviews however there are MANY websites outside of their jurisdiction which collectively went "great! less competition!" and still operate under false pretenses.
In general the best you can do is look at the whole picture and ask yourself, "does it seem too good to be true, and if so is there ANY way this person could have a vested financial interest in asking me to perform an action?" Keep in mind an action could be anything as simple as providing your email address to grow their list for later marketing purposes in exchange for something free. If the answer is yes, you alone have to weigh the risk vs reward.
posted by Elminster24 at 11:18 AM on February 3, 2010
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A lot of the time you can actually look at the URL itself. If it's got a massive redirect, or you see a snippet of a URL which is not the site you're looking for, someone probably paid for placement.
But there isn't really a way for you to tell why someone is posting something absent such technical measures. And going through the Internet trying to figure out which links represent sponsorship deals and which do not is likely to be an incredible amount of work for a result which is both unsurprising and a lot less impressive than one might hope for.
In short: if the link isn't obviously sponsored, then no, there's no good way of telling.
posted by valkyryn at 5:37 AM on February 3, 2010