Web Farm?

[jtek]

I am new to the list but have been a lurker for many years (back when it was free)
I am in question in what is a "web-farm"
Is it basically multiple parked domains but for one account / client?

Or is it a very high SEO single domain where it is loaded with Google juice / banner ads?

I keep reading different variations and out of all the lists out there this one should give the facts.

Take care and kind of glad it is a paid site as it keeps the not so serious away

[Webwork]

Hi jtek. Welcome to WebmasterWorld. ;)

Perhaps you mean "link farm"?

A link farm is about 'growing your own links". Building sites and linking them up.

[jtek]

OK this makes sense

Do you think a link farm dramatically increased the SEO or the Googlebot is smarter than that?

JTEK
Stafford TX

[MichaelBluejay]

Google is smarter than that, in my opinion.

The way to great rankings is to have a great website. Fill it full of great content that is useful and interesting to readers. If it doesn't have that, then it doesn't deserve to rank well anyway.

I think most webmasters would make better use of their time by improving their sites then trying to figure out how to get them to rank well. Because if they improved their sites then the rankings would follow naturally.

[Silvery]

Link farms are definitely to be avoided along with other frowned-upon linking schemes. Some search engines specifically mention this as a bad practice in their guidelines.

Here's a sample mention in Google Answers:

These pages look very much like the result of a "link farm". Google
has been programmed to "Zero-rank" (essentially blacklist) websites
that participate in link farms.

Search engines can often detect link farms -- look up the Stanford paper on "Combating Web Spam with TrustRank" for just one method they may use to identify the spammy links.