Brett_Tabke - 1:54 pm on Jan 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

Well, it's open to debate, but when se's say inbound links won't hurt you, I disagree. The se's will do and use whatever means at their disposal to thwart spam. In their mind, links with a spammer is the same as being a spammer. People give the se's far to much credit in that regard.

Do you suppose all the hub-bub about guestbooks there a couple months ago was just by accident? Shoot, there were people running scripts signing guestbooks. What about all the fake programs that are just designed to build link pop? Fake awards programs (run by some pretty influential people in seo), entire fake sites complete with forums, guestbooks, and other stuffed content. How are the se's suppose to combat that? They don't take the long hard road, they do what we do - the easiest solution - delete 'em, ban 'em, or bury 'em. There's 5billion main pages on the web today, they can afford to be choosy.

Ya, I think ffa links hurt you, and I think you can hurt your competition by submitting them to ffa pages through one of the online submission systems. It's been going on for several years, and will continue to go on. Don't give the se's more credit than they deserve.

I split off [webmasterworld.com] the "submission for free" discussion.