This might be relevant to some of the linklist problems

[Halfdeck]

how are they detecting and deciding that content isn't of value?

See, Bill, that's a pivotal question if you're creating low-value content and trying to make it look like its worth something.

It's less of a concern when you know you're building an original and valuable site.

Like I said before, one obvious problem with link lists is that 99% of links going in and going out are artificial. The bigger LLs have more one-ways due to higher precentage of rejections, higher submits/day, etc. Still those one-ways are losing their power too because they still leave an obvious pattern (identical anchor text, link in a table cell, instead of a paragraph block, etc), and also because even when one side drops a link, it doesn't mean Google forgets who *used* to link to what.

And I'm sure algorithms and heuristics Google uses to detect low-value content is way more involved than any of that. (e.g. looking at ratio between affiliate links vs outbounds to non-commercial sites, percentage of links from low quality site vs authority sites, visitor bounce rate, visitor behavior once they arrive at a site, how long they stay, etc).

Sidebar/footer Link trades for the sake of higher search ranking (instead of branding/traffic) and indiscriminate reciprocal linking tactics are things of the past. As long as small LL owners refuse to accept that fact, they will have a long road ahead of them.

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

Like I said before, one obvious problem with link lists is that 99% of links going in and going out are artificial. The bigger LLs have more one-ways due to higher precentage of rejections, higher submits/day, etc. Still those one-ways are losing their power too because they still leave an obvious pattern (identical anchor text, link in a table cell, instead of a paragraph block, etc), and also because even when one side drops a link, it doesn't mean Google forgets who *used* to link to what.

Good post Halfdeck. IMO, you could also mention the fact that the freesite recips are not providing much link juice anyhow before it's degraded even further by the identical anchor text, table cell links, etc..

One way to solve the identical recips problem is to use rotating recips on your webmaster page as I do on tripleXworld.com. This gives me about 9 different link text variations (could be more) on my freesites that are submitted to me.

[Useless]

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

Like I said before, one obvious problem with link lists is that 99% of links going in and going out are artificial.

I'm really rather curious how you and Bill *think* Google would react to a recip-free link list. For example, if I were to accept only clean submissions at the list in my sig, would the lack of recips eventually screw me, or would Google see it otherwise and perhaps show a little love for dropping the whole reciprocal scheme? It sounds like the recips could be hurting me more than anything. By looking at my stats, they certainly the hell aren't helping me.

We'll assume that those who already link to me wouldn't drop their links, and that others would, over time, link to me from hubs, blogs, or where ever (because they love me). I have no intention of doing the standard traffic trade link exchanges with other lists, though I do sometimes link to a submitter's own list or page from within one of my new, beefy descriptions. (though I don't think any of them have ever noticed)

What are your thoughts? I am more than willing tinker with this list to see how Google would react.

[Bill]

Well, to start out, I want to say that I've decided that I may be wrong about my initial thinking about this case.

What I was interested in, when I was reading this, is the question of how they were detecting and deciding the domain in question was low-quality content, and thereby banning it.

Upon studying it more, I realized I had left out one critical consideration - it's a mainstream site running adsense. So, it's subject to manual review.

My initial thinking on this was based on the idea that they were combining a low linking "score" (that is, the algo had decided that it had low quality links, and had given it a low score for link quality), combined with some kind of manual review.

Because, while low quality links could be detected by an algo, low quality content can pretty much only be decided by a human.

But I didn't think about the human review part of adsense.

Occams razor says the most likely cause of the banning was the adsense review.

So, I was wrong, this case doesn't necessarily tell us anything about what's happening with some of the linklists.

[Bill]

I've got some thoughts on experiments the smaller linklists could try, UW, but since I've decided my initial speculations about this particular case were mistaken, we should probably do this in another thread, so as not to confuse the two issues.

[Useless]

Well, I think there is, at the very least, a marketing lesson in your opening post, and apparently some insight on the mindset of Google's human reviewers. We do tend to toss a dozen handfuls of different colored shit against the walls of every page on a link list. Tighter targeting could probably serve us all well.

[Halfdeck]

Occams razor says the most likely cause of the banning was the adsense review.

I doubt that. Google is shutting down adsense accounts so they don't need to go to the trouble of banning a site just because its an MFA.

Not to mention the site isn't banned.

low quality content can pretty much only be decided by a human.

I think you're underestimating Google a bit.

For example, a list of possible quality factors when ranking blogs in Google's Blogsearch:

• Popularity based on news aggregator subscriptions.

  A blog document having a high number of subscriptions implies a higher quality for the blog document. Also, subscriptions can be validated against “subscriptions spam” (where spammers subscribe to their own blog documents in an attempt to make them “more popular”) by validating unique users who subscribed, or by filtering unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the subscribers.

• Inclusion of the blog in blogrolls:

  "A blogroll link to a blog document is an indication of popularity of that blog document, so aggregated blogroll links to a blog document can be counted and used to infer magnitude of popularity for the blog document."

• Existence of the blog in high quality blogrolls
• References to the blog document by other sources
• Pagerank of the blog

  A high pagerank (a signal usually calculated for regular web pages) is an indicator of high quality and, thus, can be applied to blog documents as a positive indication of the quality of the blog documents.

Negative indicators:

• Frequency of new posts

  Feeds typically include only the most recent posts from a blog document. Spammers often generate new posts in spurts (i.e., many new posts appear within a short time period) or at predictable intervals (one post every 10 minutes, or a post every 3 hours at 32 minutes past the hour). Both behaviors are correlated with malicious intent and can be used to identify possible spammers. Therefore, if the frequency at which new posts are added to the blog document matches a predictable pattern, this may be a negative indication of the quality of the blog document.

• The content of posts

  Spammers may put one version of content into a feed to improve their ranking in search results, while putting a different version on their blog document (e.g., links to irrelevant ads). This mismatch (between feed and blog document) can, therefore, be a negative indication of the quality of the blog document.

• Size of blog posts

  Many automated post generators create numerous posts of identical or very similar length. As a result, the distribution of post sizes can be used as a reliable measure of spamminess.

Just to drive the point home, here's a list of quality score factors for Google Ads:

The patent applications lists examples of 44 different factors that might be used in a quality score that doesn’t focus upon click through rates. These include such things as:
# How many times a user selects a given ad in a given session.
# A duration of time, from an ad result selection, until the user issues another search query. This may include time spent on other pages (reached via a search result click or ad click) subsequent to a given ad click.
# A ratio of the time, from a given ad result selection until the user issues another search query, as compared to all other times from ad result selections until the user issued another search query.
# Time spent, given an ad result selection, on viewing other results for the search query, but not on the given ad result.
# How many searches (i.e., a unique issued search query) that occur in a given session prior to a given search result or ad selection;
# How many searches that occur in a given session after a given search result or ad selection.
# Rather than searches, how many result page views that occur for a given search query before a given selection. This can be computed within the query (i.e., just for a unique query), or for the entire session;
# Rather than searches, how many search result page views that occur for a given search query after this selection. This can be computed within the query (i.e., just for the unique query), or for the entire session;

That's just the tip of the iceberg (yeah, just because there's a patent out on something doesn't mean Google is using it, but every patent reveals how the kids over at the Googleplex think)

Google can judge content quality without humans (though Google is far from perfect and of course they do have thousands of people looking over the SERPs).

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

Not to mention the site isn't banned.

Both the link that I followed to that thread, and, as I recall, the thread itself, used the word banned, so I used it as well.

My memory of what the thread said may be flawed, it's been several days now since I read it.

I don't ordinarily check to see wether a site is actually banned, that's not the part that interests me, and as you know, people use the word banned when they may have merely dropped in the results.