Planet13 - 12:15 am on Jan 11, 2012 (gmt 0)

Ok, I am whingeing here... but only sort of...

After pouring through about 20 different backlink reports on Majestic for different sites, I am pretty much convinced that for most sites, spammy backlinks either help them rank, or at least have no detrimental effect on their rankings.

I mean, I am looking at the backlinks of an apparel site that ranks page one for a fairly competitive term - and it's a very hippie oriented site - and they have links from hand-to-hand combat blogs, brain injury blogs, a GPS affiliate site, etc.

The site with the highest AC rank (one of Majestic's calculations) linking to them is on a page dedicated to a particular Chinese city that has NOTHING to do with the apparel site. The other web sites that are linked from this page also have nothing in common with one another: one if for wedding DJs, another for metal beds, and another for antique popcorn machines.

And the funny thing is, this is a small mom and pop business and this is their main business site. I know the owners personally (they live about 10 miles away from us), so it is not like they are buying up domains in bulk, building links, and moving on when they get penalized. this is their bread and butter site.

Right about now, I actually wish I had never got a subscription to majestic. It's just makes me feel like a chump for trying to build clean links. I wanted to find reputable, clean sites that are linking to my competitors so I could ask for one to, and there just don't seem to be any!