This might be an interesting data point for SEO watchers. I was recently emailed by an advertising agency, offering me payment for a link to one of their clients, since “their product is quite relevant to your theme”. After a few exchanges, I established that they were in the medical/insurance sector, and the fee would be £50/$100 (I didn’t attempt to negotiate upwards). Another back and forth elicited that the client would have been Norwich Union. (Oops, is that a rel=’nofollow’ I spy there? Sorry, chaps.)

While I was curious, that’s not really something I would ever do. After all, my Yes should be Yes and my No should be No; I shouldn’t and wouldn’t endorse products I didn’t have or companies of which I am not a customer, because my Yes would be a “Don’t Know”.

But it’s interesting. Given that presumably you need quite a few links to establish good PageRank, £50 like a fair amount of money. And it’s slightly odd, given that the front page of gerv.net has a PR of only 5, and this blog has one of 7. Those aren’t all that good, are they?

I should probably have asked what the link text would have been, to find out what term they were trying to promote themselves for. Ah, well.