Well, the primary reason is that the 'other' search engines have typically only accounted for 10-20% of the traffic.

And their spam control algos are several years behind googles.

There was a lot of bitching way back when, when yahoo blocked a bunch of linklists from it's pages, but yahoo traffic was pretty much considered "extra" over the more important google traffic at that time, so it eventually became accepted as the status quo.

I don't recall seeing any "google killed my small linklist" threads, tho.

It's possible I'm the only person explicitly saying that recent changes in google are hurting, maybe killing, small to medium sized linklists. Other people are saying it, but in the subtext of their posts.

I figured the writing was on the wall when GG took such a hit for a while. And I can count the number of hits coming to my freesites as well as anyone.

I figured the real question, behind eman's initial question, was "How the fuck do you guys figure we can adapt to the new google?".

That's what's interesting - How to Adapt?

You don't adapt, you continue building content rich sites that are good for the surfer. Period.

And you say..... "Well, the primary reason is that the 'other' search engines have typically only accounted for 10-20% of the traffic."

That's bullshit. Let me tell you why. Not everyone is going to rank high on google and especially for the same terms, therefore there is much more opporutunity for us besides google in the way of other se's and traffic sources. You guys that are expecting google to support your biz are asking to lose.... adapt, and develop other sources of traffic.

Jays has been banned on Yahoo for years.

I agree with this 100%. Nice post Bill.

I agree with most of your thinking on this Bill, but I disagree with your framing the recent changes at the Googleplex as a death-knell for the small LLs. Almost all LLs engage in artificial linking - that tactic is dragging them down. But as long as everyone goes down together, the SERP will not dramatically change (ranking is relative to your competition).

Advantage will go to websites that have the strongest, cleanest link profile.

All this fuckin' talk about domination on an adult webmaster board and not a whip, chain or pair of handcuffs to be found. I'm extremely disappointed.

(we now return you to your regularly schedule debate)

Well, I have tried to make it clear that I mean _hurting_ and maybe killing.

I look out on the landscape of linklists, and what I see is attrition.

I saw the closing of Free Porn Post as being the clearest sign of this trend, but wether we are talking about the apparent failure of marc's sexysites (the only new "big" linklist created by a big name in recent memory), or the fading away of places like premium sex links, to the steady reduction in traffic from almost all linklists, the picture is pretty consistent.

No linklist owner will mention it, because it's not in their business interest to do so, but the pattern seems pretty clear to me.

But FPP was a dramatic example. Carl was a hard worker, had a strong presence in the community, linked as cleanly as anyone here - but he had to close, and go to work cleaning viruses off of suburbanites computers.

I saw it as a strong lesson to us all.

The question is, how to acheive such a profile?

I think part of the answer will involve increasing the amount of unique content in the small LL domain.

The model of the freesite or gallery is close to being unique on the internet - LLs and TGPs don't create content, they link to hundreds of small (and to the search engines mostly garbage content) amounts of content created by their submitters with the now devalued recip links.

I have a hard time pointing to any other internet model that is equivalent.

The SE's used to love and reward that structure, which is what made the proliferation of small linklists possible. Now, not so much.

So, the really interesting question now is, how do you design something that makes money like the small linklist used to do, but which has a structure and content that the SEs value?