Is it just me or does this sound like a classic link farm?

[mat_bastian]

A number of people submit thier url to one person, who in turn, builds a large html links page with short descriptions of each site, and then redistributes the links page to all who submitted. He then instructs all who submitted and receives the links page to link that page from thier home page. The link to the links page can be linked in anyway, for example, anchor text being a "." or period. All sites who submit are displaying identical links pages, with the exception of being able to put a logo at the top of the page, which may account for about a 1% difference in each individuals pages.

It just sounds fishy to me and is being heavily promoted as a highly benificial strategy on a forum I frequent with a great deal of regularity.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[edited by: paynt at 2:51 am (utc) on Dec. 20, 2002]
[edit reason] remove suggestion to sticky [/edit]

[amoore]

fishy is an understatement.
I would stick to doing things that add value to your website.

[DrCool]

I would stay away.

First of all, most of the sites that would participate in programs like that are probably going to have low PR (2 or 3) and the benefit to your site would not be much.

Secondly these links won't generate very much traffic to your site or provide quality content to your users which are the two most important aspects of links.

[mat_bastian]

I personally had no intention of signing up... what I would like to find out is if it is risky enough to warn my freinds, who seem very attracted to the idea, off of it. One of the statements the guy uses to promote it is, "it can't hurt can it?" I would think blacklisting is a possibility. Am I just overly cautious or is there a real legitimate concern here?

[oilman]

it's link program - he's just doing by hand what others have automated. I'd tell your friends to steer clear.

[deft_spyder]

what differentiates that model from a web ring?

[mat_bastian]

I would say, the intentions are the largest differentiation. The purpose of a web ring is usually to transfer traffic between ring members sites, search engine rankings are probably more of a byproduct. Correct? This is essentially hidden and is never intended for actual human eyes.

[jimbeetle]

>what differentiates that model from a web ring?

Just the fact that some SEs - especially Google - don't like it. It's exactly the same model that got us and many, many other sites banned/heavily penalized by Google in the past couple of years, despite the fact that the practice was widespread before most people ever heard of Google.

Yes, warn your friends, stay away from it.

Jim

[deft_spyder]

My comment was more to point out that a web ring, which may very well be a completely benign and even helpful system of linking, might be penalized for they way that they network.

And that would be sad if they were penalized the same way for what link farms have done, because I can't see a way to differentiate them in the eyes of an automated system.

[mack]

When doing directory submission I tend to come across this sort of thing quite a lot. Not exactly the same just webmasters insisting you link to your homepage before your site will be listed in the directory. All makes for a bad directory with a high PR homepage.

[chiyo]

Yes. its a classic link farm.

Why G! and other search engines dont like them

Duplicate content
Artificial link popularity
Artificial PR
(sometimes) data which the SE sees but not the user

Its not so much that is is a link farm. It is that it results in the above 4 things. Any technique which results in the above things is liable for getting tagged for review or automatically penalised. All SEs try to reduce the effectiveness of these techniques including banning participants.

All of these things reduces the effectiveness of search for the user so SEs must address the problem if they are to remain effective.

[Dante_Maure]

My comment was more to point out that a web ring... might be penalized for they way that they network.

I've never heard of a web ring being penalized. Here's why...

>what differentiates that model from a web ring?

Web Rings are fairly benign by design since they display only 2 to 4 rotating links on each participating page.

Link farms on the other hand pose a threat to the engines because they can include hundreds of identical links pages found duplicated on every site in a large network.

[deft_spyder]

More specifically, I'm hoping they do not get penalized by a automated system. It seems that this would not be the case, because they would be flagged for human review, and thus avoid being grouped with the farms.

[Slade]

I would think that the biggest thing that differenciates this from a web ring is where the list of links is hosted. Most webrings I've seen place one or two(as was mentioned) links to other sites on a particular member's page.

There is an additional link to the list of members. This list is generally hosted by the ring owner/manager. The list of links is not duplicated.

All can benefit because so many links exist to the list page to give it decent PR, which it passes back to its members.

[Dante_Maure]

More specifically, I'm hoping they do not get penalized by a automated system. It seems that this would not be the case, because they would be flagged for human review, and thus avoid being grouped with the farms.

Actually I don't think it's even likely to be flagged for human review.

As pointed out by myself and Slade, by design, Web Rings are not likely to create any significant artificial boost in rankings which is what the SE's are concerned about.

They're a perfectly legitimate form of niche promotion, and to date, I've never seen a Web Ring penalized.