I've been displaying text-link ads on this blog for a few years now, mainly from the self-titled service, Text Link Ads. I also receive the occasional email request to display a relevant link for a small sum of money.

I've known about how this practice can affect your sites' search engine rankings in the form of being de-indexed or penalized, and most of my traffic comes from search engines.

This is a personal blog, so I'd like to get one thing straight (if only written out for my own self-reassurance).

I don't write for, nor develop this site for search engines. It's here for myself mainly - a constant stream and backlog of my life in technical terms. It's also here for anyone caring to casually read and stay involved with what's on my mind, and in my heart. And if I've even, heck, inspired or informed anyone about something, the site has served a purpose beyond my original intent.

Organic referrals

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the search engine referrals and traffic. If anything, it's helped broaden my site's reach, allowing me to meet new like-minded people. It's almost like a one-way social network for viewers interested in topics I've written about.

I've met countless friends from search engines alone - various people from all over the globe. Some I've even met in real-life, and become close contacts with. One in particular attended my wedding, and helped me find a new job, which I'm still employed at right now.

I've also re-connected with old friends after they "saw my site in search results," and just wanted to mention how that's interesting, and ask how I'm doing.

Meeting and re-connecting with people in this manner has opened up a world of possibilities.

This aspect... I'd be disappointed to see go.

But I'd like to believe I've established more genuine connections through real-world contacts and referrals, and not search engine traffic alone.

A no-win situation

Still, I'd like to keep the peace wherever possible. No sense in pissing search engines off if I can avoid it.

One option is to add rel="nofollow" to my text link ads, but then advertisers won't pay me.

If I leave off rel="nofollow", search engines won't list me.

Kind of a no-win situation.

On one hand, if someone offers me a small sum of money to display an ad in an unobtrusive way, I should be able to decide whether or not to do so, as the owner of the domain and renter of the hosting service. And why not accept such offers which at least help pay for technical costs related to serving the website?

On the other hand, referrals and connections from search engines are becoming too valuable to ignore.

The future of search engines

I could go into a whole new topic about social networks (specifically Facebook's Open Graph API), as an example of how the network of connected information is changing. Soon (it seems) we'll rely on recommendations, personalization, and stuff like that to find what we're looking for. Is that the end of search engines as we know it?

I'll just leave it at that.