Quick Neighborhood Check

tips needed to check a site in 5 minutes or less.

[jdancing]

One of my sites recently hit a PR5 and all of a sudden I am getting lots of link requests. I usually don't have a problem linking back to a clean site, but with 10 requests per day I want to spend less then one hour per day checking these sites to make sure they are playing by the rules.

Can anyone give a list of tips, red flags or things to look for that will speed up the site checking process? Currently, I can spend one half hour checking out one site and since I don’t have 5 hours a day to do this, I would like to identify sites that spam, cloak, hide text etc...in less than 5 minutes.

This “quick site check”, would need to be fairly accurate and should not produce more than 5% false positives. So suggestions such as “don’t link to anyone in X category” will not work.

Thanks,

John

[bunltd]

John, nothing to offer, because I'm in the same boat - similarly positioned site, getting more and more link requests - some aren't even asking for a link back...

Okay Link Development People: how do you handle it?

LisaB

[rogerd]

Probably everybody has their own approach... but I think you can get a quick feel for a site just by examining a few pages. If the site has a keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com domain name and is stuffed with affiliate links, be on your guard. If it seems like a sleepy little mom & pop site with no evidence of optimization, you probably don't have to go through it with a fine tooth comb.

You can use a spider like Xenu to see what's out there on a site. I've found massess of doorway pages linked via hidden 1 pixel gifs, for instance. A quick visual review wouldn't have disclosed these.

I usually try highlighting the page with my mouse as a quick check for hidden text and links; a peek at the source code can also be illuminating.

The Google toolbar may still be somewhat useful, too, though I wouldn't trust the PR0 to mean much at the moment.

In short, look for telltale signs of spam potential, and dig deeper if you find them. Remember, of course, that one link to a spammy site almost certainly won't damage your site's PR. If you are reasonably diligent in checking things out, the one or two that get by you (or change after you link to them) won't hurt you.

[pageoneresults]

These days I'll do a quick search by domain...

www.example.com

Usually, if there are no penalities associated, I'll see a full listing (title/snippet) along with these four choices...

Google can show you the following information for this URL:

Show Google's cache of www.example.com

Find web pages that are similar to www.example.com

Find web pages that link to www.example.com

Find web pages that contain the term "www.example.com"

If options 3 and 4 return results, then I can almost be certain that there are no penalties involved with that property.

I also do company name searches. Many times if they've optimized properly, they should be in the top ten for their company name.

The above would be done after following some of rogerd's advice above.

With severe penalities (typically associated with really bad neighborhoods), you won't be able to locate the domain using the above search parameters.

[jdancing]

Great tips. I like the Xenu tip, I'll give that a try. One red flag is when 'no archive' is on for Google. Seeing this prompts me to dig a bit deeper.

[rogerd]

Great advice, pageoneresults!

One more point, jdancing - one thing you should be trying to spot is the potential for penalties, not just the existence of a current penalty. Linking to a site that has good PR but is employing techniques that could draw a penalty if noticed is asking for trouble.

[bunltd]

Thanks, rogerd and pageoneresults. It's pretty much what I thought, just wanted to see if anyone had thought of anything I hadn't considered, or had any faster techniques. Looks like work for the weekend for me.

LisaB