Google Related Links, Anyone tried the new service? Options

[eKstreme]

Just found this via DP: Google Related Links. From their site:

Google Related Links use the power of Google to automatically bring fresh, dynamic and interesting content links to any website. Webmasters can place these units on their site to provide visitors with links to useful information related to the site's content, including relevant news, searches, and pages.

It creates some JS to embed into your site. When the page loads, a "related" links section is created linking to news and searches and stuff.

The whole thread at DP is filled with people calling it "AdSense for free" and how this does not benefit the webmasters at all - only Google. Anyone tried it? Does it work well? What's your take?

Pierre

[JohnMu]

(scratching my head)

How is this any different than the web-spam sites that scrape Googles serps for "additional links"?

Sometimes I really don't understand Google. On one side they act like they want to fight webspam, on the other side they offer tons of services that let sites with webspam profit (adsense, related links, ...) and look like "normal" sites to uninformed visitors.

(tinfoil hat on)Perhaps Google just wants to get their javascript linked as many websites as possible, so that they have more numbers and statistics for "whatever" they want to do with that? Imagine the data they could have if they were to log views, referrers, etc for all sites that link any of their javascript

John

[joedolson]

I've got it installed on my blog for experimentation, and I'll definitely post my opinions after I've left it there for a while.

So far: it's interesting, but I'm not so excited that I'm likely to leave it there for the long time. It's nice to be able to provide related web pages or news articles, but I'm not convinced that the relevancy is high enough for this service to really be useful to me.

How is this any different than the web-spam sites that scrape Googles serps for "additional links"?

Ummmm....wellll...Google wants you to scrape THESE links?

-Joe

[edit]
Fixed link - thanks softplus!
[/edit]

This post has been edited by joedolson: Apr 4 2006, 06:31 AM

[bwelford]

... and Google DOES NO EVIL.

[JohnMu]

Heh, finally something new and I have a bit of time

I just blogged about Googles Related Links

and did a quick test, comparing them to Adsense

Ain't I quick? Any comments?

[joedolson]

Just read your posts, and it sounds pretty much like what I was thinking. The service just doesn't provide much to a website. The only benefit I can see is that it can potentially provide added value to a page without the appearance of commercialization. However, that depends entirely on the average visitor being aware that Google Related links are non-commercial! Just as a guess, most visitors are likely to perceive this service as just some new kind of ad rather than as a purely informational service.

I guess from a purely information perspective, it can be valuable, if it manages truly relevant associated content.

On my experiment, after an hour or so, it has managed very relevant content for some pages - but none at all for others. It seems very inconsistent. The main content I'm seeing, however, is relevant but not very useful links and articles.

I'm not too impressed - will probably take it off my site within a week, but I want to let it run a little while to see how it changes.

[Ruud]

Depending on which problem it solves I think this is a perfect service.

Problem: "We're looking to establish a trusted source or related links, like Yahoo context search but simpler... something.. I dunno... something that will give scraper sites another tool to look legit and install trust... hmmm.... <scratches head> and oh!! -- it also needs to be able to be used to make link pages relevant!"

Google engineer: "Ha! I have just the thing for you!"

Never been impressed with Google's "related" pages feature anyway, by the way. At times I feel the relation is along the line of "these pages also are on the www!"