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The overall trend I see with rotating links is that they work fairly well in the beginning of a campaign and then gradually lose effectiveness over time. This can probably be attributed to the fact that Google is now considering link age as a factor in determining a links worth.

I personally do not buy rotating links for my own sites but I know several people who have found success in doing it. Digitalpoints co-op network is probably the best example of rotating links being effective. Many of their members have found success, although usually only for non-competitive keywords.

In my opinion any value it has will disappear in a matter of time (just as the link itself does). This kind of thing is simply too easy for search engines to track and identify what is going on.

I agree with both of you and it makes the most sense. However, how do you explain the continued success of the rotating links sold on internet.com?

I would argue that the Internet.com links don't seem to be working as well as they once did on Google. They seem to still give you a good kick on MSN and Yahoo though.

You have to remember that most websites that can afford the Internet.com buy already had significant link popularity and great rankings going into the program so it is easy to confuse where the results are coming from. Obviously it is difficult to analyze a competitor when they have 2 million backlinks mixed in from Internet.com's network. Maybe that alone is worth the price tag for some websites, it keeps competitors away ;)

Fair enough - It is hard to tell what is helping what. So if rotating links are going out of style - what is newest trend or the best way to buy links these days?

I think rotating links carry value from pages in googles regular rotation, whereas rotating links from deep pages carry little.

For example if a link is on an index page that gets its cache refreshed everyday and google sees that it finds the link there at least once a week, the link carries value. However, on a deep page that only gets cached/crawled once a month, rotating links will carry little to no value.

But I could be just talking out of my arse again.

>>I think rotating links carry value from pages in googles regular rotation, whereas rotating links from deep pages carry little.

I think opposite is true, since SEs don`t index inner pages as much as inner pages (due to difference in link popularity), rotating links in inner pages could have more lasting effects than rotating links on home page.

Secondly I have a feelin, position of exterenal links (rotating and non rotating) also plays an important role.

Large chunks of extermal rotating links can be filetered out, or links in the footer (end of the page) could also be easily mark out.