Comments on: Fishing for Links

By: Charles

Charles — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:17:22 +0000

I don’t agree that Google should be penalizing people who buy links. First of all I really don’t think they do, because you look around at all the commercial sites. Guess what, all these guys have payed seo copmanies to buy links to boost their search ranking. All of it is payed, not a lot of these sites get high ranking because of natural popularity. The people who will end up suffering from this is the middle and lower class who ends up buying a few links.

By: Alek

Alek — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:43:50 +0000

One step at a time Google is improving the search engine to show more relevant results but i dont underestand why they want to penalize such a grey area. And for penalizing also for links from unrelevant sites is a really bad idea and will making link bait harder.. You must now make sure that your link bait is Only interesting to your site or page niche and if it happen to be interesting for others as well you will risk losing your search engine traffic? :0

By: designer jewelry girl

designer jewelry girl — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:50:17 +0000

I do not think Google is anyone’s enemy (except maybe YHO or MS!).

By: EH

EH — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:02:43 +0000

Google is getting increasingly selective about what links are actually related to your site. When building links, it is import to remember to stick with sites or blogs that have related content to your own website. If you are linked to unrelated websites, those search engines will discount your website and it will put you lower on the PageRank instead of moving you up like you want it to.

By: pittfall

pittfall — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:45:57 +0000

@Faiz: Thanks for the comment.

The harm for Google is that they aren’t providing the “most relevant” results for the user. If people feel that the “unpaid” results are for sale, then it may give competitors like MSN and Yahoo! the opportunity to gain market share.

By: Faiz

Faiz — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:35:56 +0000

hmmm, if such links are violating Google’s webmaster guide, then they who earn money from paid review, etc will be the party who are disadvantaged. For me, it’s never mind. What harm will such links cause to Google?

By: pittfall

pittfall — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:04:54 +0000

@Enache: Thanks for the comment.

I would tend to agree, however these are not related sites (fishing and jewelry) and they are client sites not all owned by the same person.

I am sure you have seen this as well, a design or SEO company puts a link at the bottom of their clients’ sites. Great marketing opportunity, but I feel that the owner of the design company should not receive a great deal of link value for all of these.

IMHO – this is a link farming tactic, small, but still passing link popularity value from an unrelated network of sites.

By: Enache

Enache — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:42:25 +0000

I don’t think there is anything wrong if you link a network of your sites together if those sites are in the same niche and interest area, even hosted on the same server.

Remember the backbone of internet is linking together resources.

By: pittfall

pittfall — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:32:59 +0000

I think that we will hear about this well into the future!

Thanks for all of your comments!

By: rosezar

rosezar — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:30:52 +0000

there are many tricks about it but at the end, google find to solutions and develop to itself.

By: Web tools & Tips

Web tools & Tips — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:38:02 +0000

Nice informed discussion.
It adds many bells to my wisdom. But I still feel howsoever Google tries, such tactics cannot be stopped completely.

By: pittfall

pittfall — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:10:02 +0000

@Nick Wilsdon: Nick, thanks for the comment.

I think that many website owners are seeing the end results of the engagement… traffic and not asking questions. I think that, for this reason, website owners have a responsibility to researching the people and companies that they do business with, at the least, the tactics used.

By: pittfall

pittfall — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:06:36 +0000

@spostareduro: I have to say that I didn’t spend as much time on the site in question, rather, I was looking at how deep it went across other domains and sites.

As much as it pains me, I hate to see this kind of behavior from those who are promoting themselves as adding value to their clients. I think that more than anything, it uncovers a pattern of behavior that is trying to manipulate SERPs, maybe not PageRank.

Thanks for the comment.

By: Nick Wilsdon

Nick Wilsdon — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:53:31 +0000

It just looks to me like the SEO has created a link network with all his clients. One of the oldest ‘tricks’ in the book and more asshat than grey or black.

In Google’s eyes – yep, it would probably come under “Links intended to manipulate PageRank”. Probably more relevant though to read their notes on deceptive SEO practices, as it appears he initiated this.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Basically alarm bells should ring if your SEO asks you to link to his or her other clients. If I were the owners of these sites, I would remove these link-blocks pronto before someone posts about it…ah.

By: spostareduro

spostareduro — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:17:26 +0000

when i first began blogging, i used to add “blah blah” to my img tags even when they weren’t “blah blah” related. thats because i was totally new and thought that they could be used that way legitimately. duh..

did you see their sitemap?!! holy cow..all of the keywords are linked to items, plus all of the links beneath them are outlined to define each type, whether pearl, diamond, silver, band, bracelet, ring, etc..talk about repeat links? spider glory? it’s the same as using two sitemaps on one page for heaven sakes.

i would have to say that if one technique is being used to manipulate PR, then it’s POSSIBLE they don’t know any better. But when you combine ALL of the techniques that are being used, they should be informed of their behaviors. their SEO is at fault, as they probably do not know any better. (or not..who knows if they have been willing participants in crooked behavior)

maybe someone should tell them that their SEO could have them penalized? just a thought..

By: pittfall

pittfall — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:42:21 +0000

@Craig: Thanks, something that I didn’t look into further, but it highlights the depth of these tactics.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:03:34 +0000

It definitely looks like they’re using (abusing) links in order to gain PR and rankings.

Did you notice that most of the sites in question are hosted on the same server? Something fishy is going on there!

By: FeedBomb

FeedBomb — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Fishing for Links