Google's 950 Penalty

[Bill]

Originally Posted by jennym

I have been having the thought that there are some LL that are in a group sort of like that co-op. They all pretty much interlink. That is why I thought some sites were penalized. It is what I was trying to convey in that *other* thread. Not that my site was special, but that I wanted to get out of "the group" to see if it helped me with Google.

And getting out of "the group" is certainly a valid and interesting experiment.

But, I'm definitely not sure that "the group" and the kind of co-op linking Cutts described would be seen as similar by google.

The reason I think that, is that there is a natural tendency for sites devoted to the same subjects to link to each other. This doesn't make them a linking scheme to game google. (altho, as we all know, adult sites come damn close to doing this, especially, ESPECIALLY, with the tendency to link based on PR)

Note the anchors of the links in the site cutts mentioned:

"Online Loan | Santa Cruz Hotels | Xbox Mod Chip | Home Loan | Mobile Phones " or "Bad Credit Mortgages | Afvallen | Problem Remortgage | Mortgage | Myspace Layouts".

This is radically different from what adult sites do.

I do happen to have some big concerns about the way adult sites handle:

1. uniform anchor text
2. links at the bottoms of pages
3. not giving one way links to each other
4. and still this, IMNSHO, idiotic obsession with PR, as evidenced by all the crazy people posting links about how they want "PR4+ links", without ever once mentioning the damn niche and relevance of the links.