SnapShot Sneaks in Random Links
On the web, you’re never more than about two clicks away from anything and everything. You can’t control who talks about you nor who links to your site. However, you can control who you link to, unless you use Google’s AdSense or the equivalent. At SensoryMetrics, we’ve resisted the temptation to generate cash using this random link method. If we advertise something, we want to be the ones to choose what that product or service is. We want to be in control of what shows up on SM. We also know from past experience that the click through rate even on very popular sites is very low. Of course, even a low click through rate on a high traffic site will generate some cash.
A few weeks back you may have noticed that we enabled Snap on the site. It lets you preview links to external sites. You just rollover the little icon next to a link. It works by popping up a little image of the site’s page before you actually go to that site. I really like it, the visual previews quickly provide context.
Unfortunately, we’ve just noticed that Snap has now added random links to other sites into the snapshot previews. I can see why they’d want to do this. However, I wish they’d give us the option to buy the SnapShot service for our readers without the random ad links (or allow us to choose what is linked). It would be another way for them make money (from us control freaks). In the meantime, we’re now looking for an advertising free alternative to Snap. Please let us know if you know of (or have built) such a solution.
Tags: Snap, snapshot, advertising, links
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