Link Lists Closing
 

We're closing a couple of our link lists.

http://100-free-porn-movies-sex-videos-and-pics.com/
http://1-stop-blowjobs-and-cumshots.com/

We don't really have the resources to work them properly at this time, so rather than letting them sit and stagnate while the submissions pile up, we decided to just shut them down for now.

SS

What does closing them mean? Are the domains satying up?

Click either link and I think it's obvious :)

We talked about leaving them up, but the main factor in our decision can be explained by this

http://www.johnon.com/312/google-algorithm.html

The guy we had reviewing the sites wasn't very web/seo savvy. He was just trying to keep up with the submits and dodge the spammers. There was some pretty spammy stuff on the sites.

We talked about going through them and cleaning them up, spending time training the reviewer better, bla, bla, bla, but we don't have the time or the manpower to do that right now, so to avoid the risk of spammy sites adversely effecting the rest of our sites the only other choice was to close them.

I would just have nofollowed all the outbound links instead of shutting the sites down.

By nofollowing links to all your submits, you're preventing your site from linking out to crap. Though that would have pissed off your submitters, since you're no longer accepting submits, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. And who knows, nofollowing your outbounds might have ended up giving you higher search rankings, because all your IBLs turned one-way instead of reciprocal.

I don't know why that Google article made you take them offline... Linking to sites does not show bad intent in Google's eyes. If anything, I would think too many nofollow tags might do just that.

Please PM me with your ICQ contacts - I want to buy your linklists.

I guess that's why Wikipedia, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Digg are nowhere to be found on Google.

Linking out to crap is one of the primary causes of penalties and loss in ranking. Nofollow says I'm sending these guys traffic but I don't vouch for their sites. Using them is better than wiping out two domains that was bringing in money.

We can't know for sure that the freesite links were the "crap".

I still think a dupe content filter is just as likely (more likely, IMO) as a bad neighborhood filter.

I don't think we have a good model yet of why some of the medium-to-small linklists have lost their positions.

But I'd agree with Halfdeck, it's not at all likely that a lot of nofollows would lead google to drop the pages any further in positions.

If you nofollow, say, the freesite listings, sponsor links, and the trades, you create a kind of list that a lot of people would stop subbing to and trading with- but it would have been an interesting experiment, to see how google reacted to it.

Since I don't know all of the link lists and the keywords they lost positions on I sent you a pm that may shed some light on the subject. :)

Adding nofollow tags to listings, where submitters have put up valid links to the LL is wrong, IMHO. If you put up nofollow tags, let submitters know before you do, so they can put a nofollow tag on your recip.

If the domains are bringing in money, leave them and don't link to them from your other sites on your network. That would spare you from any real or perceived Google wrath. Just don't put nofollow tags on listings of FS where people linked back to you with a fair and clear link.

I realize this isn't what the OP did, just stating my view about nofollow tags :)

I am wondering does Google notice the link to you is a nofollow tag and then possibly fault you a little being the link that has the nofollow tag?

If not I might be fine with a link list that isn't going to update or anything anymore but at least might be able to get the traffic that clicks through and maybe not just the SE juice it gives. Because if the link list goes down completely well then you aren't getting anything. |huh

Just thinkin...

Ok, I agree with that.

You missed the point of the article spacemanspiff linked to:

Now, I'm not sure this depth of analysis happens algorithmically, and I wouldn't kill a money-making domain based on just one article. But it would make no sense for Matt Cutts to draw conclusions about what Google's algos were doing by going to lengths the algoes never bothered to go.

No. Nofollow just means I don't vouch for that link. Its a signal of intent, not site quality. To put it in really simplistic terms, if I nofollow a link to cnn, for example, it doesn't mean cnn is a bad site. It means that I do not want the link to boost cnn's search engine ranking.