Page Submission

Ethics

[billy fullerton]

What is the forums opinion of submitting other peoples links pages to the main search engines once a link has been posted towards your clients sites?

I don't see a problem with it, but is it a bit unruly?

[agerhart]

Billy,

I personally do not practice this method, or have not in the past......but I have heard many people say that they do it, and I know all of them to practice ethical procedures.

[Brett_Tabke]

Do a search first and see if you can find it in the engine. If you can find it, then don't worry about it as it will be picked up during normal spidering.

If you can't find it in the search engine, make a note of it. Sometimes I will submit a links page depending on who it is and my confidence factor that they won't do it, don't know how to do it, or don't know enough that they should do it.

Generally, I find most people submit their own and there isn't a point to submitting for them. Sometimes, I'll go so far as to point my own link at their links page.

[mivox]

I generally submit incoming link pages to two or three major SEs... I don't think it's unruly at all. If the other site's webmaster is concerned about keeping the SEs out of their site, they need to take the proper robots.txt/.htaccess precautions.

Otherwise the spiders will find them sooner or later with or without my help.

[IanTurner]

Pesonally I am inclined against submitting other peoples pages without their knowledge.

Especially as some search engines are set against multiple submissions of the same page. If webmaster x sets up a new links page with a dozen links on it and each of the webmasters for those sites then submitted that page they might get a whole site blacklisted.

At best ungentlemanly (unladylike) conduct, at worst seriously unethical/immoral.

[rogerd]

Some webmasters, sensitive to the ethical issues of submitting other sites' pages, will instead create a "hallway page" on their own site that contains the URLs of linked pages. They'll then submit this page or let spiders find it on their own.

(Though now, with all the concern about unwanted links, I suppose some webmasters might object even to this.) I wouldn't worry about it too much either way. I don't think either action would cause tremendous harm to a site.

[mivox]

they might get a whole site blacklisted

Side note: I don't know of any major SE currently blacklisting for multiple submissions (someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this, as I certainly wouldn't want to risk incurring penalties for my incoming link providers!). It makes it FAR to easy for "Site A" to get its competitor "Site B" blacklisted simply by oversubmitting Site B's pages...

(edited by: mivox at 9:34 pm (gmt) on Sep. 6, 2001

[agerhart]

Mivox is right.....the SE's have stopped doing this.

Think about how easy it would be for you to take out every single direct competitor you have!.....it is ridiculous. Most of the SE's realize this

[IanTurner]

I agree agerhart it would be stupid of them to let competitors remove the opposition, however both DirectHit and AltaVista still warn against this on their Submissions pages,indicating that their could be penalties.

AltaVista's submission also seems to be a submit/remove toggle - is this true?

[mivox]

AltaVista's submission also seems to be a submit/remove toggle

It's not a "toggle" to the best of my knowledge... you give them a URL, and they immediately send a request to the URL to make sure the file exists.

If they get a 404 error when they check the URL, it goes in their "remove" pile. If they successfully reach the URL, it goes in their "add" pile.

<edit>yeesh... I'm the typo QUEEN today...</edit>

[IanTurner]

Thanks mivox

[mivox]

:) It all gets to be a bit much to keep up with sometimes! Luckily, I have no life so I've got time.

[GWJ]

I'm with Brett. Just do a check first but otherwise submit the page if not found.

Brian

[billy fullerton]

I'd only submit a page if I couldn't find it on the main search engines, it's not a thing that I do automatically to every link page that lists one of my clients sites on their links page.

I check when the site was last updated first, and if it was over a month or so and it's ranking could be better it can be helping that webmaster more than hindering.

I am of course Scottish, and as everyone out there knows we're a very considerate and caring race. :)