Uninvited Listing

linking to competitor sites

[sunzon]

I ran a search today for my basic website title (why haven't I ever done that before?).
Two words, one of which is a highly popular term (so is the other in fact but unrelated).
I was amazed to get over 40,000 precise results.
Whilst the first few pages are good (my own pages come first, then some of my other sites that link to it) I cannot understand all those other thousands of sites, directories, competitors, link pages, none of which I ever submitted to.
Why would competitors be linking to me (mostly to a sub page on a relevant subject)?
A random check shows their PR is always lower than my main page, otherwise lower or equal to my subpage.
I didn't check all 40,000 but I didn't recognize a single one from my referral stats, so they bring me no traffic.
It makes me suspicious of their motive. Any ideas anyone?

[GerBot]

They are attempting to become an autority site based on the hilltop theory.

The idea being that if they link to all the top sites for a particular topic and also link to another niche site of theirs - their target niche site will become a expert site through association.

Although I suspect most people doing this are really just hoping that their directory site will gain some traffic as an authority.

[diamondgrl]

It's pure search engine spam, that's all. They are probably almost all bot-generated sites with worthless content organized by a bot for bots intended to sucker poor humans into clicking on an ad on the site.

[createErrorMsg]

I suspect most people doing this are really just hoping that their directory site will gain some traffic as an authority

It's pure search engine spam, that's all.

Cynical, cynical!
Let's not forget the distinct possibility that this is just organic linking.

Why would competitors be linking to me (mostly to a sub page on a relevant subject)?

People might be linking to your pages because the pages provide good, relevant information for their users.

I link directly to several competing sites because they provide additional information on my topic that I do not provide. If it's an authority site, a diligent user is going to find it anyway. If they find it through me, I get brownie points for directing them to the info they needed. I think this makes them more likely to come to my site when they need the specific information that I DO provide.

The frenzy to secure links and feed Google's algo has made a lot of people afraid to link to relevant sites for fear of 'helping out the competition.' I think it's a shame. Organic linking results in the best web structure of all...sites that are interconnected based on the relevancy of their information as determined by those most invested in the topic, rather than sites linked together based on the numerical value of a little green line.

I'm not saying that all 40,000 of the links you found were organic, but it's probably jumping the gun a bit to assume that it's all people either trying to harm you or latch-on to you like a lamprey.

cEM

[diamondgrl]

Yeah, that's it. Probably 40,000 webmasters independently thought it was a good idea to link to you organically. Sorry to have been so skeptical.

[createErrorMsg]

I'm not saying that all 40,000 of the links you found were organic

Sorry. Should I have bolded that the first time I wrote it?

[sunzon]

Of course if it's organic structuring (maybe a few) or hilltop oriented (most and bot-generated) as you've pointed out, good luck to them. Question is does it have any effect on my website at all. In particular, any possible negative effect.

Most seem industry related, but maybe 15% totally unrelated. Don't they take some space away from my website on SERPS? After all they showed up on my keyword choice (but admittedly after my own sites) so presumably variations on the keyword choice may lift them higher and my own site lower. Would I improve on SERPS if they hadn't listed me?

[sunzon]

diamondgrl:

justified scepticism in this case (the number being 40000 and not 40 gave you a pretty good indication)

[sunzon]

Google's webmaster advisory states:
<<Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.>>

Of course they refer to outgoing links, but if lots of "bad neighbourhood" sites are linking to my website, could that influence my own ranking adversely?

[howiejs]

"Of course they refer to outgoing links, but if lots of "bad neighbourhood" sites are linking to my website, could that influence my own ranking adversely?"

Another website can not hurt you by linking to you

[GerBot]

I'll second that point.
Another website can't hurt your rankings by linking o you.