Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[edited by: martinibuster at 6:44 pm (utc) on Jan. 30, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed specifics. [/edit]
Fwiw, I've heard from many webmasters who initially have done well with link matchmaking services, only to subsequently lose their rankings or suffered a banning in Yahoo and/or Google.
[edited by: martinibuster at 7:04 am (utc) on Jan. 31, 2006]
[edited by: martinibuster at 7:05 am (utc) on Jan. 31, 2006]
[edit reason] Edited per TOS. [/edit]
Don't see the difference with manually search websites to contact for reciprocal links and register your site there to be found and find other quality websites...
1: It creates a cluster of sites all linking with each other. In a link analysis of the web looking for clusters, the members of these services are easy to spot by the search engines.
2: Reciprocal linking also creates clusters, but they're not closed clusters.
3: If you rank well because of these services, it is within the realm of possibilities that your competitors will file a spam report on you, which I think happens to a lot of people (competitors love to keep the playing feel even, don't they?).
I don't have anything against these services, but you should be honest with yourself about what you're getting into, and the possible consequences.
Don't see the difference...
There's a difference in the way they look, many members have had their rankings lost specifically from using these services, the search engines spam fighters don't like them. There are huge differences.
From my conversations with people from the search engines, the thing I heard the most, is that they didn't feel a large reciprocal links section was anything useful for the user.
So you do the math: If the search engines feel that something about your website is useless for their users, what does that mean?
Fwiw, I've heard from many webmasters who initially have done well with link matchmaking services, only to subsequently lose their rankings or suffered a banning in Yahoo and/or Google.
I believe you 100% that they're doing well at this time. However, because a competitor is doing well at the moment with something is not a valid reason to participate in something that may cause a negative long term effect on your website.
I have a number of clients that came to me because they were burned by using these services. Whether they got caught by the algo or a spam report, it's anyone's guess.
And it's a pain to rehabilitate these sites because you will need to have a hand check to get back in. Now you're in a situation where the little dodgy things you could get away with under the eye of the algo is coming under the scrutiny of an actual person, and your site now has to be REALLY clean to get back in.
