LOR - my sites have gone

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Greenie - you know Im not gonna bash you - but the line of reasoning doesnt make any sense from a Link List point of view - unless Ive been out of the loop way too long - the point of listing free sites and providing a recip trade for that listing was all traffic based - and had no basis in where a free site ranked or for that matter, whether it was even listed in SE's?? Now I know that a few LLs have made a point of rewarding free sites that existed with Google rankings but that was extra bonus's - not the basis of acceptance for listing...

Forget this domain, because I'm still thinking that the 403 on the index was the problem.

You would knowingly link to a site that you believe (or know for sure) is banned by Google or Yahoo or another popular search engine?

[Linkster]

Greenie - first off I dont think that the 403 on the index would cause a removal - only if the 403 occured on the free site itself - I really dont care what they have on the root index unless its something objectional/against the rules - and Im pretty sure the bot you use doesnt check the index page on the root - just the sites listed - but that may just be something youre doing on the side that I didnt know

As far as the SE stuff - first - the keyword here is knowingly - and Id say that in pretty much every case Ive looked at where someone has posted that a domain is banned in Google - it was not - someone had looked at Google using thier little script tool or some other sites tools and decided that it was banned - which in Google is highly unlikely and very few and far between. Unfortunately a lot of "SEOs" have decided that Google bans sites/domains for all types of reasons - and this just isnt so - they may hand remove a domain/site based on some spam reports from the index - or go so far as to supplemental out some pages based on dupes - but banning at Google really is saved for extreme cases. Now if they are "not listed" that is a different scenario and can be caused by reasons ranging from not being crawled properly, not enough time since first crawled to be included, not linked to properly etc etc - hundreds of reasons - but none that would stop me as a linklist owner from listing the site.
I have looked at the tools that some of the "knowledgeable SEOs" are using to determine if a site is "banned" by Google, and all it checks is backlinks (which Google has already stated is fake), PR (which again Google has already stated is faked in the toolbar) and occasionally they mine into some areas of Google that they "interpret" to their liking for indicators of "bannedness"

So as I said - the keyword here is knowingly - and quite honestly there is no way to "know" because Google aint gonna tell ya

[Linkster]

One other point is really to answer the question you asked Greenie - with an example - you and I know that there are quite a few link lists banned from Yahoo - myself being one of them, Hoes and others - and yet we all link to each other without caring about that, because we know that the trades we have are respected by Google (and they do have quite a bit more traffic ) and provide not only the natural linking structures we want but also do provide a good experience for our surfers (which is a heck of a lot more important than worrying about whether a free site is listed in yahoo)