annej - 11:53 pm on Feb 7, 2007 (gmt 0)

could this be related to over-optimizing inbound anchor text

I thought it couldn’t be on the missing pages as they have very few inbound links other than scraper links. Most of their PR comes from a very strong homepage that is inbound linked widely in the field.

It has finally occurred to me that with few inbounds and so many scraper links it may look like over-optimizing inbound anchor. In other words could the scraper sites be causing an overoptimization situation on these pages? They usually have identical anchor text as they just take the page title.

Nick, I’m so glad I re-read what you said today. You may be on to something here. Google has no way of knowing we didn’t solicit those scraper links. So pages with few inbounds could be hurt by several scraper links.