I've Pulled Hardlink Trades - You May Want To Read This

Linkster · 2007-04-25, 06:51 PM

Reviving this one - just got an email today - site is edited out but thought it was interesting that they considered the fact that other sites might leave links up to them after they pull all outgoing link trades - more interesting is that when I visited the LL I noticed that they had broken their categories down into pae 1, 2 etc and no cat link trades were on the first cat page at all - and this is before they started pulling links???

"Hi,

We really appreciate the link exchanges that you have done with us over the past years.

We have some link lists that are performing poorly in the Google SERPS and we're trying to figure out why. We've looked at a lot of on-site factors and made adjustments without much effect so far. We're now looking at the off-site factors that we think may effect rankings. This is not a "knee-jerk" reaction. We've been studying and experimenting since October on sites that started trending down at that time.

We think that google may have identified certain sites as part of a link farm (for lack of a better phrase). We think that this link farm consists of somewhere between 50 and 100 sites. If you look at the SERPS and go to the back (the 1000th result) and start looking forward you'll see a lot of pages from sites that are part of the same group of link exchanges. We not saying that these sites constitute a link farm in the usual sense like free-4-all schemes, but that Google may have tightened up their definition of link farms.

We are conducting an SEO experiment to see if we can identify this as the case. To do this, we are going to pull links to all sites on site. We are doing this because we really have no way of telling which sites/pages Google considers part of this link farm and which are not. We want to let Google spider this site for a few weeks and see that it is no longer linking to the same group of sites, then see what effect this has on our placement in the SERPS. We're not making any statements as to whether any sites are penalized or artificially dampened.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this may cause you. We encourage you to watch the SERPS to see if our experiment works. Please feel free to contact us at any time and we will gladly share our thoughts and findings with you.

We certainly understand if you want to pull your links to our site. It may help you to do this...we just don't know at this point. We own close to 400 sites and the only links we're pulling are the ones on site edited out.

As you know, sometimes SEO is just trial and error. A lot of the webmasters that we've spoken to have expressed the same concerns about linking to a big group of sites that all tend to link to each other. The only way to find out is by experimentation. This is what we are doing, we are trying something and letting all of our link exchange partners know up front so you too can watch the results, and hopefully benefit from this experiment too.

We are not ruling out putting links back on this site after the experiment...we just want to give it some time with no link exchanges on this one site to see what happens.

Again, thanks in advance for your patience and understanding."

Linkster · 2007-04-25, 07:14 PM

Funny thing is this very same site that sent out this email has evidently already pulled the cat trades - but their second page of links - which is where I assumed they put the link trades isnt there - and the free site submitters arent going to be happy with this:
"robots" content="noindex,nofollow - on the cat pages after the newest page

Surfn · 2007-04-25, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Linkster

Funny thing is this very same site that sent out this email has evidently already pulled the cat trades - but their second page of links - which is where I assumed they put the link trades isnt there - and the free site submitters arent going to be happy with this:
"robots" content="noindex,nofollow - on the cat pages after the newest page

Interesting...

plateman · 2007-04-25, 07:44 PM

it really sorta good that this going down like this and see what LL owners are gonna start stabbing in the back

plus all the old LL that enjoyed years and years of a good income from google and thought they would never loose it was wrong, if you cant afford to loose a few LL se traffic that you own for a while then you didnt choose your biz model well...

I know for one I am gonna contact a few other LL's that I have index trades with to dissolve them, when I see prolly over a 100 hardlink trades on a index that IMO is a link farm

Linkster · 2007-04-25, 08:16 PM

The whole issue here is that anyone can interpret Google's definition of a link farm - I guess all those blogs out there that recip link on their first pages willnow be considered link farms if you follow the same theory to its conclusion - add to that that there are many LLs and TGPs in the top 100 that have exactly the same structure (and link partners) the whole concept falls apart

Surfn · 2007-04-25, 09:07 PM

I have never pulled an honest working link trade and have no plans to begin such a practice.

Of course I don't have the huge trades I see on many sites these days...I prefer old school trade partners.

DangerDave · 2007-04-25, 09:24 PM

Hahaha.. Linkster you should name them! I know that I want to know who they are so that I can make sure I avoid them!

People need to stop blaming Google and other sites for their 'misfortune', and concentrate on their own 'work'. Additionally they should start ignoring all these theorists that only come up with crap to explain their own stupidity or laziness.

The "rules" for ranking well in google have not changed in years since it arrived.

If you have regularly updated relevant and informative content you will rank well.
If you have and continue to gain incoming links to your sites from other quality and relevant sites you will rank well.
Do both and you will out rank everyone, and who you link to will have absolutely no influence on anything..

Based on some peoples theories, if Microsft linked to Plateman then Microsoft's ranking would fall.. What a crock of shit

Hi JennyM

- is that arrogant enuff for you!?

DD

Bill · 2007-04-25, 07:16 PM

I like how they say, "Your sites and links may be considered part of a link farm (but our _four hundred_ sites are innocent victims.)".

Bill · 2007-04-25, 07:22 PM

The experiment, however, is a valid one. It would be interesting to see what happens.

However, since they know that not everyone will get around to dropping their links, they know the experiment is invalid because of all the inbounds. Naturally if you kill the reciprocals by dropping the outgoings from your page, increasing the number of oneway incomings, you're going to enjoy a short burst of relevance at other peoples expense.

So, lets say that the experiment _would_ be a valid one, if everybody jumps quick and kills all their links to that domain.

2007-04-25, 06:51 PM	#1
Linkster NO! Im not a female - but being a dragon, I do eat them. Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sex Delta Posts: 5,084	Reviving this one - just got an email today - site is edited out but thought it was interesting that they considered the fact that other sites might leave links up to them after they pull all outgoing link trades - more interesting is that when I visited the LL I noticed that they had broken their categories down into pae 1, 2 etc and no cat link trades were on the first cat page at all - and this is before they started pulling links??? "Hi, We really appreciate the link exchanges that you have done with us over the past years. We have some link lists that are performing poorly in the Google SERPS and we're trying to figure out why. We've looked at a lot of on-site factors and made adjustments without much effect so far. We're now looking at the off-site factors that we think may effect rankings. This is not a "knee-jerk" reaction. We've been studying and experimenting since October on sites that started trending down at that time. We think that google may have identified certain sites as part of a link farm (for lack of a better phrase). We think that this link farm consists of somewhere between 50 and 100 sites. If you look at the SERPS and go to the back (the 1000th result) and start looking forward you'll see a lot of pages from sites that are part of the same group of link exchanges. We not saying that these sites constitute a link farm in the usual sense like free-4-all schemes, but that Google may have tightened up their definition of link farms. We are conducting an SEO experiment to see if we can identify this as the case. To do this, we are going to pull links to all sites on site. We are doing this because we really have no way of telling which sites/pages Google considers part of this link farm and which are not. We want to let Google spider this site for a few weeks and see that it is no longer linking to the same group of sites, then see what effect this has on our placement in the SERPS. We're not making any statements as to whether any sites are penalized or artificially dampened. We apologize for the inconvenience that this may cause you. We encourage you to watch the SERPS to see if our experiment works. Please feel free to contact us at any time and we will gladly share our thoughts and findings with you. We certainly understand if you want to pull your links to our site. It may help you to do this...we just don't know at this point. We own close to 400 sites and the only links we're pulling are the ones on site edited out. As you know, sometimes SEO is just trial and error. A lot of the webmasters that we've spoken to have expressed the same concerns about linking to a big group of sites that all tend to link to each other. The only way to find out is by experimentation. This is what we are doing, we are trying something and letting all of our link exchange partners know up front so you too can watch the results, and hopefully benefit from this experiment too. We are not ruling out putting links back on this site after the experiment...we just want to give it some time with no link exchanges on this one site to see what happens. Again, thanks in advance for your patience and understanding." __________________ Pussy Chompers Porn Links NSCash Last edited by Linkster; 2007-04-25 at 06:54 PM..

2007-04-25, 07:14 PM	#2
Linkster NO! Im not a female - but being a dragon, I do eat them. Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sex Delta Posts: 5,084	Funny thing is this very same site that sent out this email has evidently already pulled the cat trades - but their second page of links - which is where I assumed they put the link trades isnt there - and the free site submitters arent going to be happy with this: "robots" content="noindex,nofollow - on the cat pages after the newest page __________________ Pussy Chompers Porn Links NSCash

2007-04-25, 07:44 PM	#4
plateman What can I do - I was born this way LOL Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: ohio Posts: 3,086	it really sorta good that this going down like this and see what LL owners are gonna start stabbing in the back plus all the old LL that enjoyed years and years of a good income from google and thought they would never loose it was wrong, if you cant afford to loose a few LL se traffic that you own for a while then you didnt choose your biz model well... I know for one I am gonna contact a few other LL's that I have index trades with to dissolve them, when I see prolly over a 100 hardlink trades on a index that IMO is a link farm __________________ Submit to: Porn O Plenty XXX Links Reality Here

2007-04-25, 08:16 PM	#5
Linkster NO! Im not a female - but being a dragon, I do eat them. Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sex Delta Posts: 5,084	The whole issue here is that anyone can interpret Google's definition of a link farm - I guess all those blogs out there that recip link on their first pages willnow be considered link farms if you follow the same theory to its conclusion - add to that that there are many LLs and TGPs in the top 100 that have exactly the same structure (and link partners) the whole concept falls apart __________________ Pussy Chompers Porn Links NSCash

2007-04-25, 09:07 PM	#6
Surfn If you don’t take a chance the Angels won’t dance Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Earth on occasion Posts: 8,812	I have never pulled an honest working link trade and have no plans to begin such a practice. Of course I don't have the huge trades I see on many sites these days...I prefer old school trade partners. __________________ Surfn's Links Are you a partner?

2007-04-25, 09:24 PM	#7
DangerDave Bonged Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: BrisVegas, AUSTRALIA Posts: 4,882	Hahaha.. Linkster you should name them! I know that I want to know who they are so that I can make sure I avoid them! People need to stop blaming Google and other sites for their 'misfortune', and concentrate on their own 'work'. Additionally they should start ignoring all these theorists that only come up with crap to explain their own stupidity or laziness. The "rules" for ranking well in google have not changed in years since it arrived. If you have regularly updated relevant and informative content you will rank well. If you have and continue to gain incoming links to your sites from other quality and relevant sites you will rank well. Do both and you will out rank everyone, and who you link to will have absolutely no influence on anything.. Based on some peoples theories, if Microsft linked to Plateman then Microsoft's ranking would fall.. What a crock of shit Hi JennyM - is that arrogant enuff for you!? DD

2007-04-25, 07:16 PM	#8
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	I like how they say, "Your sites and links may be considered part of a link farm (but our _four hundred_ sites are innocent victims.)".

2007-04-25, 07:22 PM	#9
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	The experiment, however, is a valid one. It would be interesting to see what happens. However, since they know that not everyone will get around to dropping their links, they know the experiment is invalid because of all the inbounds. Naturally if you kill the reciprocals by dropping the outgoings from your page, increasing the number of oneway incomings, you're going to enjoy a short burst of relevance at other peoples expense. So, lets say that the experiment _would_ be a valid one, if everybody jumps quick and kills all their links to that domain.