robots txt to prevent crawling of freesites

[virgohippy]

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

Still, my main objection would be against tactics aimed at artificially boosting your SE rankings. I wouldn't assume grey hat methods like recips (they're not citations or "votes" with minimal traffic value) will work indefinitely.

For the moment, there may be some mutual benefit, albeit small, but it's certainly reassuring to know that in the future things can only get more strict/difficult. |shocking|

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

P.S. Off topic, but if I ran a LL, I would think about tagging links to free sites with NOFOLLOW, as does Technorati tag pages, which are starting to rank very well on Google. You eliminate the reciprocal linking issue (turn all free site links into one way links), and possible negative trust brought on by linking to supplemental/duplicate content pages on untrusted domains.

I can think of a few other wembasters who stopped submitting to a few lists because of this. As a word of caution, just as a LL owner wouldn't want to recieve a nofollow in their link, I don't think a submitter would be too happy to get one either.

If I had a choice, I'd rather link to fewer sites and send more of my traffic to submitters who make quality sites and unique warning pages. IMO, doing so not only benefits both of us as far as SEO is concerned, but it also maintains a quality brand for my own LL.