There is a debate raging right now about whether or not publishers should or should not have sponsored links on their websites. Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo gives sponsored links the thumbs up and Matt Cutts of Google gives them the thumbs down.
Many publishers feel that they have the right to monetize their own websites with any means possible and this includes sponsored links. The real debate seems to be around whether or not to use the ‘no follow’ tag on the sponsored links in order to pass on a little link love to the advertisers.
Zawodny says he screens his advertisers and only links to high quality websites and neither his website nor this advertisers should be penalized in the search engine rankings. Cutts, on the other hand, says that the ‘no follow’ tag is needed to ensure publishers don’t link to spammy sites or websites with little value to visitors.
It’s a great debate and is similar to the ‘bad neighborhood’ linking debate that arose a couple of years back that has helped many webmaster be more aware of just whom they are linking to and why this matters. Right now, the safest method for Google’s sake is to use the ‘no follow’ tag for sponsored links (not for reciprocal links as your partners will surely get mad at you) to ensure your site receives decent rankings in the SERP’s.
Of course tomorrow may be a different story, so stay tuned.
