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What and Where is the Advertising? 

The advertising is inside joomap.html.php. It creates a rotating series of text links combining of one the words in $keywords with one of the words in $location. So one day your site might link back to http://www.ko-ca.com with the keyphrase "Webdesign Ruhrgebiet" and the next day it might be "Programmierung Hagen":

//BEGIN: Advertisement
            if( $config->includelink ) {
                $keywords = array('Webdesign', 'Software Anpassung', 'Software Entwicklung', 'Programmierung');
                $location = array('Iserlohn', 'Hagen', 'Dortmund', 'Ruhrgebiet', 'NRW');
                $advert = $keywords[mt_rand() % count($keywords)].' '.$location[mt_rand() % count($location)];
                echo "<a href=\"http://www.ko-ca.com\" style=\"font-size:1px;display:none;\">$advert</a>";
            }
            //END: Advertisement

 How Many Sites Have These Links?

• Google has 1700 site linking to ko-ca.com
• Yahoo has 59,400 site linking to ko-ca.com

Google always underestimates link quantity and even Yahoo rarely find a majority of incoming links. I think we can safely say the quantity is well over 100,000.

Removing This Link from Your Site

Go to Components >> Joomap >> Display and set "Invisible link to author" to No.

What's Wrong with the Hidden Links

1. Its Against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. A link is simply an HTML tool to send people from one site to another. Therefore a hidden link has absolutely no purpose, except being an attempt to trick the search engines?
   
2. Originally it wasn't disclosed. If you have versions of Joomap between 2.0 and 2.3 you may well have this hidden advertising. It wasn't present in 1.0 versions of Joomap and since 2.4 the option to switch it off has been added. The only mention I could find of this advertising was in the changelog.
   
3. It is still very, very easy to miss. There's no mention of it on the author's site and only a small easy-to-miss check box to turn if off.
   

What's the Solution?

We've been through the hidden advertising problem before with several other components and templates. Perhaps the solution is to include a program like Joomla Credits in the Joomla core with a link to it from the Main Menu. People who don't want it displayed can simply unpublish the menu link.

This would make it easy for everyone to understand who they are linking to. It would also mean that Joomla developers could give away their products and perhaps get even more links than they do now, without needing to be deceptive.

Comments (11)

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written by Good Web Practices, December 11, 2007

I'm using 2.04 and I actually hadn't switched this off on my site first time round, so thanks for the tip While its a little sneaky, at least the author give us the option of switching it off in the component settings rather than having to hack the files like you need to for some extensions. While I say this is a little sneaky of the author, I can see the temptation it is him to do this....all those inbounds links is a gold mine for him, and arguably a reward for his hard work.

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written by Steve Burge, December 11, 2007

Hi David. I'd say three things:

1) From our study of template links and component links, it doesn't work.

2) Because the tempation is there, but that doesn't make it right

3) His reward should be a genuine text link on the Sitemap page or via Joomlacredits rather than an invisible link that puts you in violation of search engine guidelines.

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written by Good Web Practices, December 11, 2007

Hi Steve, I agree that because the temptation is there, it mean it's right! That's theologically sound too! Anyway, I think you're right in that it would have been more ethical if the author had put a text link on the sitemap page.
(p.s. the links to "template links" and components links" are broken)

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written by trichnosis, December 11, 2007

wow, that's intresting . as i know , google is following the hidden links . google may punish people because of this

Sign of the times?
written by Anne Hennegar, December 11, 2007

Amit at Digital Inspiration had a similar post with a blog readability badge. http://www.labnol.org/internet...scam/1910/

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written by Mirko, December 12, 2007

Hi there,
Hidden Links are always the wrong way !
I wrote a short message to Daniel Grothe, the german developer of Joomap with this problem. I hope he will bring out a patch without this "fault". If not, the hole power of the J!Community will strike back ;-) or someone should rewrite a new Joomap...

XMAP too
written by Mirko, December 12, 2007

Just looked for alternatives. What a suprise - the well-known "XMAP", which build on joomap, has the same hidden feauture !

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written by Steve Burge, December 12, 2007

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Anne - thats a great link and backs up what people are saying here.

Mirko - you're absolutely right. Xmap are doing the same thing!

I've posted on Joomla.org: http://forum.joomla.org/index....770.0.html
Basically I said two things:

1) Components with hidden advertising should be removed in the same way as others who break the Extension Directory rules
2) Joomlacredits should be included in the core

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written by Zorro, December 12, 2007

Well, in all fairness - while it may be a bit on the edge of sneakiness in the case of Joomap, the option to disable the link is right there in the configuration, clearly visible to any site admin who actually takes a little time to configure their setup and is able to read what's in front of them. To me, that has quite a different quality from the way Artio inject their spammy links, for example.

That's not to say hidden links are a good thing. Of course, they're not, and the author made a big mistake by including them ... something he might regret dearly now. But then again, if you look at your configuration carefully (which you should after updating a component), I find it hard to miss the option to disable the links.

Kind regards,
Zorro

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written by Steve Burge, December 12, 2007

Hi Zorro

1) The original versions 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 didn't have the option to turn it off
2) It needs a warning saying "checking yes will put you in violation of Google's guidelines"

He's not the only one to do this, so I don't want to make too much of it. It would be nice instead to find a way to credit developers with genuine, over-board links (JoomlaCredits) rather than tempting them to resort to this.

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written by Brian Teeman, December 13, 2007

There are plenty of extensions that include hidden backlinks with no option to remove them at all. Although they are backlinks to the extension developer and not to a 3rd party advertisor imho they are just as bad. one has 867,000 google link results and another has over 7.3 million

The only links that should appear on your page are those you insert yourself

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