Trading with penalized sites??
 

Ok, this has been bugging me for a few days, so lets see what everyone thinks. I think linking to a lot of penalized sites is bad for my page (Google wise). Do you agree?

Now, the hard thing is deciding who I think is penalized by Google. Here are the 2 scenarios that are currently bugging me. Please keep in mind that I do not care about PR for PR sake when trading. I only mention PR in the following examples as ways to possibly determine a penalty.

If a site/page has been online for over a year, shouldn't it have some PR? I am coming across 2 things in checking over my link trades that bother me.

1) Site/page online for over a year (some online for 3 or 4 years)...no PR, but site is cached. Do you think this is indicative of a penalty? Would you trade with a site like this? Would you delete a trade with a site like this?

2) Site/page online for over a year....no PR, and NO CACHE of the page. Do you think this is indicative of a penalty? Would you trade with a site like this? Would you delete a trade with a site like this?

Thoughts please....|loony|

Seems difficult to rate this way. Some people have domains for years before they put up a site on it, and some pages can have the 'no-cache' meta directive to prevent it being cached.

You're doing the right thing by thinking about this though. I tend to trade hardlinks with sites that have some PR ranking and a relatively normal domain and site like mine, not 'sexybutt.a4ulinks890.cz'.

A wise man once said:

It is as important to consider who you link to, as it is to consider who is linking to you.

I'd be more concerned about trading links with a link list that's on a stolen domain, like FetshCrawler.com for example, which I see you link to. :(

I remember some of this being discussed months ago, about linking to domains that may or may not be in Google's god-like graces, but it's damn difficult to know the history of a domain and whether or not it is amongst the beloved.

Hard to keep up with all the thieves and assholes in this business. Those links will be removed as I come across them (tomorrow).

These particular link trades have been up for quite a long time. They are not from the last few weeks, or even months. That is why I get concerned with the issues I mention above.

So, your answer to my post would have been

yes
yes
1)yes, no, yes
2)yes, no, yes

Thanks|thumb
:D

I think linking to penalized sites, can affect you, yes.
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769
"In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."
I also don't think that if any penalized or banned site links to you, this can affect you, as you have no control on it, so nothing that doesn't go from your url can affect you, otherwise it would be easy for anyone with a banned domain to put you down by linking to you ...

The biggest problem you face is that there is no tool out there that really reflects accurately the Google PR - the toolbar is known to be faked and has been for two years, any smart webmaster knows how to get fake PR for a domain using 302s and so far no one else has been able to hack Google well enough to get into their real PR database :)

Im glad you decided that PR is not a good indicator of trade worthiness - something Ive been preaching for years as has at least one other LL owner here.

One indicator you can usually trust is Googles Directory (if the site is listed there) as they tend to update that quarterly with a good indicator of the pages ranking and it also means that the page is listed in DMOZ(for what thats worth) :)

Overall - looking at a site and its history using domaintools (the new whois.sc) and what type of linking they do - as well as the most important part - does the site add any value to your surfers? - is the best approach

Take a look also at whether the site has any history of being listed consistently in Googles SERPs over time - dont use a one day snapshot as its really too easy to play for a few weeks and then drop completely.

F*ck PR it's pure bullshit PERIOD !
Anyways, as soon as you think you got something goin' about SE it changes

One problem is that a surprisingly large number of sponsor FHG domains are on Google's bad list - pretty much all of BrainCash's galleries, for only one prominent example. So you have to balance what converts for you on your TGP vs. taking an SE traffic hit because of links to legitimate but "banned" galleries.

And you know that certain sponsors galleries are on Googles "bad list" how? I would love to see proof of that (and not a post on a board - actual physical proof)

I think he's talking about the badware interstitial that pops up on some sites.

It really is difficult to say. Personally I would rather error on the side of caution

cd34 - he specifically named one program and I know when I go to their galleries I dont get the interstitial - and pages with the interstitial arent considered bad neighborhoods - they are just some poor Wm that doesnt know he got hacked

In which way would you error on the side of caution - any examples - or even better any real life experiences?

Sure - sign up for Google webmaster tools and get a site analysis done of a site with lots of outgoing links to freepornofreeporn.com (BrainCash's FHG domain) - you'll see freepornofreeporn.com in red and red connecting lines galore and text informing you that links to this domain penalize your search results because they appear to contain exploits, etc.

My intent was not to pick on BrainCash (I think they're a fine program) - but that was one very prominent example I remembered from when I did this a few months ago. There are several others. My criticism is more of Google, as none of the "redlined" sponsor FHGs appeared to have any real exploits anywhere in their code.

Are you sure you were doing that from within Google tools - the only analysis program I know they have in the WM tools is the page analysis which doesnt do anything close to what you are talking about?

What it sounds like you are talking about is the SiteAdvisor pages:
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/freepornofreeporn.com
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with Googles banning of pages

Well, hell - you are correct, my friend. It was several months ago, and I did the analysis to try and find out why I was getting such crappy (read - zero) PR on that one domain but not on any of my others. So yes, I conflated that w/ Google in my head. Mea culpa. |bus|

But still - if McAfee redlines certain domains for such reasons, can you be 100% sure Google isn't doing the same or similar? Linking to galleries that link to sponsor popups, etc? And again, sponsor popups seem to be the *only* thing I could find about any of those FHG domains that would create a red flag for Google, McAfee or whoever.

lassiter :) I dont think they do any type of association as Google has always been pretty proud of their own spam detection
I know that my site has two red arrows coming out of it
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/linkforsex.com and I still rank #1 for linkforsex LOL
And doing some quick checking of the #1 site for "porn" he has similar arrows coming out so I dont think that would be a detrimental factor on the surface anyway
It is interesting that I noticed that one of my submitters site is red due to him linking to wegcash but I think we already discussed that in another thread here

Thanks for that info Linkster - you are the SE God, after all. :)

And apologies for posting misleading info - it was based on my own personal "drain bamage" and not intended for malicious or badmouthing reasons.

I'll go hide now... |couch|

Here is a url which can come handy, the ban checker:
http://whoblocksme.com/

You can do the same check yourself as that tool in Google - just seems to check if your domain is listed using a site: command which is really not a good way to see if youre banned since you could just not have been added to the index yet

Does the PR bar not show banned anymore? It use to be a grey bar, if memory serves me right, meant google banned the site. I remember people getting banned and having the grey PR bar.

A grey bar can also mean the site has not been indexed yet. So, that alone is not indicative of a penalty. The problem I have with most of these sites, is that they have been around quite a while, and I am pretty sure they had PR before. I will probably be deleting those trades. |confused|

There's been a pattern in the past year plus of interior pages, like cat pages, losing their apparent pr for periods of time. It hasn't seemed to affect their positions or traffic all that much, but it's disconcerting to see.

You might be seeing that. I saw it happening again, but unevenly, during this last pr "update".

Linking should be based on keyword relevance and to a lesser degree to the numbers of links on the linking pages, not pr.

And on the traffic coming directly from the link exchanges.

But nobody seems to care about that much.

I'd be willing to bet money the pages you are talking about could never be shown to have been penalized.

I'm pretty sure, there was a difference, different color between banned and not indexed. Thought gray was banned and all white was, not indexed or, who knows.

I have seen some of that, but I am talking mostly about index pages here.

While that is true to a certain extent, it would really suck if I did it that way and lost all of my Google traffic because I was linking to too many of what Google considers "bad" sites.

My understanding is grey bar meant not in the index, whether it be banned or just not indexed yet. White bar meant the site was indexed, but not assigned any PR that exceeded 1 yet.

An index page loosing it's pr is unusual, and I've not yet seen it happen with the bobbling that can affect interior pages.

Can you give an example? Without a specific case it's just hard to say.

Reluctantly, I will. Not picking on anyone here, just the first 2 examples I came across.

http://free-porn-lord.com/ - site has been online since 2002. There is no PR anywhere on the site that I can find, but the site has been cached recently. I have had this trade for a very long time.

http://www.freesexlifestyle.com/ - site has been online since 2004. There is no PR on the index page, but a few pages in the site have PR. There is also NO cache of the index page.

|huh

To use those two examples
The second one seems to have some linking issues using www. vs not using www - but definitely not banned by Google - they have 340 pages including the index page listed

The first one looks like a similar issue - and again Google has most of their pages indexed - they do have either a programming error thats causing some dupes in frames or something on their server side not working correctly but other than that they are not banned either.

Both sites have a cache date for their index pages within the last week so Google is obviously botting them pretty well

In the years since Google started I have only seen one link list actually get banned - and that was due to some log spamming they were doing - and we all pulled links to them and no ill effects to anyone else

Do you know if they were zeroed before this latest pr update?

If they were zeroed by the last update, there's always the possibility that it's an artifact of the update, and they'll be back to normal next one.

If they were zeroed before, and didn't recover from the update, that would be more likely to be a sign google has decided there's something wrong with the site.

With links that old, if you thought the link was a good one before, I'd be inclined to wait one more update before deciding.

It might be worthwhile to contact the owner of the other pages and ask them if they know what happened.

You gotta talk to them anyway - dropping links without notifying the other guy is a risky thing to do, it can damage your reputation as a linker.

Any thoughts on why they may have lost pr Linkster?

It was clear they weren't banned - which leaves the question of "are they devalued somehow, and therefore risky to link to?".

Bill - I have no way of seeing the PR :) I would assume that its related to the problems that Google has been having with the PR display in the toolbar over the last two years - noticed some people complaining of the same thing on another board about their sites - and eventually it came back

I know you can't know, man, nobody can know. ;-} I was asking for your best guess.

Which sounds like the same as mine - If I had to say, my first choice would be "probably an artifact", by which I mean a peculiarity in the way the toolbar is displaying apparent pr.

Or a product of the internal linking or stucture of the domain - I didn't check to see if there was pr on the index if you typed out domain.com/index.html as opposed to just using the trailing slash.

You already mentioned possible problems with the structure of one of them - maybe leading to a canonical pages selection on googles part that took the pr off the index.

Which still leaves the question of "Is there a risk in linking to the page?".

I still end up with, if you aren't sure it was zeroed before this last pr "update", wait one more update to see if it's pr is restored. And notify the link trader so they can check their structure.