Death of the Category Recip

[MadMax]

I'm happy to keep with the times, but could someone bring me up to date on the apparent demise of category recips? (i.e. wha happun?)

[Cleo]

I would say about a year or so ago along with making a bunch of doorway pages.

[Greenguy]

Oddly enough, I did hear everyone on the SE panel at XBiz state that deep linking is still the best type of inbound links, so they might not officially be dead.

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Oddly enough, I did hear everyone on the SE panel at XBiz state that deep linking is still the best type of inbound links, so they might not officially be dead.

I say keep em. Whoever thinks they no longer work is uninformed.

[davion]

Recips...Most Adult sites do their recips....Unlike the mainstream...One way inbound links really helps a lot...

[Nymph]

I give the submitter a choice of using either the warning, main, or category recip on NL. I don't believe in forcing anything down anyone's throat.

[MeatPounder]

Deep Category recips are most likely worth more then general recips true.
From what I've heard and seen search engines really do like links to specific pages within a site...it gives the site more breadth and depth.

Problem is it creates a nightmare for free site submitters, when cat recips became an accepted (and required by some) demand by many link lists, it took more time to do the recip table for a submission then it took to actually build the site.

So many link lists have dozens if not many more cats..with new cats added constantly, also every link list had their own list specific cats.

When it got to the point I had to have over 50 prebuilt recip tables for the same group of link lists, along with demand for the exact use of poorly coded link list built recips (you would have to go into the recips and change their default colors with every free site color scheme for example), and when ever you decided to add or remove a link list from a submission group you would have to go and redesign 50 pre-built tables or more (one for each category or sub category or sub sub category).... I basically gave up

Never mind the headache of you and any specific link list actually having different opinions of what Cat the site acutually was (with general recips reviewers constantly may move the site to another cat, but less likely to do so when a cat recip was there, in that case the reviewer was more likely to reject the site)

So though deep linking is great from static or semi static pages, requiring it for free site submissions was one of the main reasons I stopped building

[Bill]

It might be just superstition. post hoc ergo propter hoc

But not long after we all adopted cat recips, linklists started losing position in the google serps, a loss that has gotten way worse and shows no sign of repairing itself.

There are several/many possible explanations for this, the predictable artifice of the cat link only one of many.

In any event, the historical truth is, when cat links started, traffic to freesites fell.

Yes, maybe it was falling anyway and cat links were a LL owners attempt to recover. who can say.

[Cleo]

Surfer comes to the free site from somewhere.

Maybe buys something from the index page or the home page but most likely clicks through to a gallery and if the surfer likes the page bookmarks it or posts about it or emails the link. None of which gives any credit to the LL. At least the TGPs have their recip on the gallery page.

Best one is the tubes though. No matter if the surfer bookmarks it or posts about it or emails the link the url is the tube, deep linked even.

I guess this is what PicHunter was trying to do by making a TGP tube style. Not really sure how that all worked out for them.

[Greenguy]

Bill - it was YEARS after I added category recips (which I copied from Murray) that we dropped out of the top rankings on the SE's. I don't think one has anything to do with the other.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Bill - it was YEARS after I added category recips (which I copied from Murray) that we dropped out of the top rankings on the SE's. I don't think one has anything to do with the other.

Since I didn't take notes at the time, I can't be sure, but this is my mental model of it.

Cat recips became the standard in 2004, give or take.

18 months later google had recognized them for what they are, an attempt to game google, and started revising it's algos to pare away "excess recips intended only to increase ranking". So, in 2006 these algos start to have effect. Remember, it used to be 3-4 months between major google reshuffles, not instant like today.

Another year passes in which many of the weaker linklists are driven back in the serps, and traffic falls after each google update. You and several others are held up by your history and the number of one way links pointing to you. But you start to weaken. It's late 2007-2008.

Then, and I could be wrong about this, I cheerfully admit, but I personally believe google had it's manual review team (which existed at the time, and I gather has mostly been dissolved) start to hunt specifically for link competitors, directorys and linklists. Over a period of about 8 months, in waves, the bigger linklists suddenly dissappear from top positions they had held for years.

With a few exceptions - the manual review team picked a few "survivors" that were allowed to survive. We all know who those survivors are.

(I'm probably totally wrong about the manual review team idea, it just fits the pattern I seemed to be observing. Anybody is free to come up with their theory, cuz none of us know.).

The manual adjustments that the manual review team made are still in place, artificially holding down a bunch of pages that would otherwise bob up. Thats been the story of 2009.

---

Anyway all of this could all be bullshit. I'm full of shit on my best day.

But, the bottom line is, nobody seems to think the cat recip is the magic bullet it used to be.

And it's easier, more flexible, and more time efficient to build without them. Tho I still use them all the time.

[Greenguy]

Web Archive page of my recip page from Oct 13th 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/200210130.../linkstuff.htm

August 2007 is when my listing shit the bed, so almost a 5 year span.

But, the bottom line is, nobody seems to think the cat recip is the magic bullet it used to be.

At XBiz, the guys on the SE panel and the guys on the HTML5 panel all agreed that deep linking is still the best way to beef up your SE listings.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Web Archive page of my recip page from Oct 13th 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/200210130.../linkstuff.htm

August 2007 is when my listing shit the bed, so almost a 5 year span.

At XBiz, the guys on the SE panel and the guys on the HTML5 panel all agreed that deep linking is still the best way to beef up your SE listings.

Then let's switch to just the deep link. And see what happens.

That would be less obvious attempt to manipulate links, and possibly safer. But, it would also be a pure page-to-page recip, and hence weaker.

I've suggested here in the past that we should adopt entirely new linking patterns with greater unpredictability and less blatant structure, more like natural linking. That is unlikely to happen.

I'm hardly the first person to suggest that google eventually saw the cat recips, deemed them a way to game google, and punished them.

They ARE a way to game google, to get in two links instead of one, that's what they always were. It was an inherent risk.