Almost all Webmasters are aware of the Million Dollar Homepage, what a great idea (in hindsight). But let's look at these types of sites from a link building stand point. I have a client that advertised on this site and it brought in a ton of traffic, guess what, I still can't find the location of his ad. :) But besides for the traffic, will those pixel links, 1x1 pixel links, be seen as link spam by the engines?
Two recent threads touch on this topic, the first at Search Engine Watch Forums and the second at WebmasterWorld.
It is of the belief that a single pixel like link can flag a site for review. If the links are pretty much hidden, then bam - you can be penalized. But what about the Million Dollar Homepage and all its clones? The WebmasterWorld thread asks if the clones will be seen as link farms by Google and be taken down from a popularity building component in the link equation? Good question.
Right off the bat, the WebmasterWorld thread has some excellent responses, if you cant see them, I will quote a few, but it six pages deep and it makes for a nice read.
Receptional: I confess it occured to me the second I got a phone call from a person setting this up as a business model and wanting help. I had to say no thanks straight off the bat. The idea was cool once - but Google won't even have to tweak their algo to stop it working a thousand times. Why? because it is only unique once. No other attempt will get the same media attention.
Mack:We over look one fact when viewing these million dollar pages. Google will only count the first 100 links on any given page. Even if then where to pass PR what would you honestly expect to receive from a 100th share of even a PR8. I dont see how it is possible for these pages to pass PR anyway, some use redirects etc so all you can realisticaly hope for is clicks.
Stuntdubl: >link farm yep. >pass PR nope.>help rankings nope.
>great idea (the first time) yep.
>piece of internet history yep.
