April 2003

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It's the day before Easter. At some point this weekend, I really need to put away the Christmas decorations.

I promised that I would tell you a funny story about two people with the same name.

One of those two I know slightly, from The Usual Suspects board. We have both been there long enough that I know what sort of work she does for a living---I'm not stalking her, the board frequently has work-related topics.

So I was surprised to get a request from a person with that name asking for a link to Rebeccaworks for a website unrelated to that work.

I took a look at the site, and for reasons I'll explain in a bit, I didn't really want to link to it. But I would have been willing to do a link if it had been my fellow Suspect. I decided finding that out would be next on the agenda. So I wrote to her, saying that I would do the link but I was going to rewrite the link text, if she were the site owner. I went on to say that if she weren't the same person, I would probably turn down the link.

I was most relieved the next day when she wrote back, saying that no, she hadn't started the site, but thanked me for asking. After I got her note, I wrote to the person who had asked for the link and told her that I was going to turn down her request since upon investigating her site, I could find nothing there but a list of links. It is supposed to be a site dealing in gift baskets, from the name, but all its content was a list of links to sites where one could order various gift baskets. I told her the site looked to be a link farm, and that the search engines were not happy about those.

If it had been my fellow Suspect's site, I would have written a link that stated this was a site of helpful links to gift basket sites, and hoped for the best for both of our sakes. And I would have (politely, of course) shared my qualms with her about the lack of contents on the site, and the information I have about link farming. I would have encouraged her to at least provide a method wherein she was the distributor for something tangible, in order for the site to be something other than a list of links. I'm glad I didn't have to sound like a scoldy bitch to someone with whom I've shared good times.

I am a bit curious as to what sort of affiliate arrangements the non-Suspect has worked out. And even more curious about whether or not she's been banned from the search engines yet.