Comments on: Other sites can hurt your ranking

By: JohnMu

JohnMu — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:14:09 +0000

My main tool for evaluating the value of a site before I link to it is the MSN linkfromdomain:-query. There’s nothing better — even if MSN only has 1/100th of the data that Google (or even Yahoo) has. It would be great to be able to check up on sites like that, eg: [linkfromdomain:othersite.com xxx] or better: [linkfromdomain:othersite.com seo]

By: JLH

JLH — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:14:42 +0000

You raise another fine point. When evaluating the health of a site you are linking to using the site: command and looking at toolbar PR are no longer reliable sources of information. mmm….more blog fodder.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:49:31 +0000

Just because Google keeps some reported spam in the index that does not mean that they didn’t (re)act on the spam report.

Just because a (reported) source of paid links still shows a nice toolbar PR that does not mean that it passes link juice.

In this sense the analogy is ok, but hapless otherwise. I think you clearly underestimate the brain power Google invests algo tuning and development. Remember that they algorithmically deal with paid links since 2003 at least, and imagine what they could have discovered and invented til today.

Sure, when I silently sell you a link they won’t spot its intention, especially not because I tend to naturally link to your stuff every now and then. And your warning is spot on, sites trying to boost their ranking with too many paid links should watch out.

By: JLH

JLH — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:42:14 +0000

What they say what they do are two different things. We can all point to spam in the index, file a ton of spam reports, and it still stays there, so their ability to automatically spot things is limited at best. Their willingness to take action on individual sites is even more documented.

They may say they will take action for buying links, but is it a scalable possiblity? I doubt it. Of course for large networks of sites that leave trails or just have random links that change on every page reload it’s easy to spot. But of course if I paypal Sebastion $100 for a link, who’s going to know it?

As with anything Google, the big popular sites are of course immune to this. If you’ve already got thousands of links a few bad ones won’t hurt. But if you’ve got 10 links and 3 of those are suspect you may be in trouble. New sites, or small ones on the bubble, will be the ones hurt the most, which is true of any Google change in philosophy. Or should I say, true in life as well

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:33:48 +0000

Do we *know* that the destination of a paid link gets penalized? To my best knowledge, no. All reliable sources tell us that the linking page may lose its ability to pass link juice, and that the link’s destination just cannot suck any search engine love from discovered paid links. That’s pragmatic, and it makes sound sense. JohnMu may be spot on with his presumption that Google pays special attention to sites “attracting” too many links from sources known as link sellers. Again, this would make sense, but that’s not the same as penalizing. I’d say that purchasing links is quite safe but most probably not worth the money.

By: JLH

JLH — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:36:08 +0000

I agree with your analysis JohnMu, that’s how it should work. However, that is also contrary to what today’s existing standard says. Like I said, I hope they make a change, and hopefully with a retraction so everyone knows it. You can only be held responsible for what is on your site when it comes to doling out penalties.

By: JohnMu

JohnMu — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:27:56 +0000

I still have a feeling that it’s the other way around: the site selling the links gets the penalty, if any. Look at the sites that had the DP setup - they got it and were unpenalized after removing the setup and filing a reinclusion request.

Look at it the other way: Assume your site is supported mainly by paid links. Is there a need to penalize the site if the paid links are easily recognized and suddenly discounted or blocked from passing value? Assuming half of the paid links are found right away (TLA, DP, etc) - they could take that as a signal and check the other half of the links with a more detailed, intense algorithm. If those links are also found to be mostly paid (but not so openly), the chances that they’re discounted will be much higher than if the site only had the kind of paid links that took a detailed analysis to find.

If your site is known to be supported almost completely by paid links, chances are that Google will (could) look twice at all other new links.

If your site is known to have a strong natural backing, Google might just take the obvious paid links and remove them and leave the harder-to-find ones alone.

I’m sure it could be abused, but it’ll be expensive :D. I could go out and buy 1000 PR6 links for a new domain that someone else registered and hope it is enough to trigger the detailed analysis for all other links. Would that be worth it? It might work for a new site (and you might do them a giant favor, lol), but it will be much harder for an existing, strongly backed site. Will the price of “naked” paid links go down now? 1000 PR6 links will still remain costly, if only for the value from the traffic.