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Googleguy has said that you will not be penalised for actions beyond your control. On that basis, no penalty for this.
I think you are right to be concerned. I believe the main problem comes if they somehow manage to link you back to these guest book sites (like, via a link exchange you unwittingly agree to, or if you run a forum). I must admit, because my industry has seen so much Spam from cross linking sites ranking well, I mused (only that) with the idea of submitting them to adult sites and then asking for a link back ;-).
Maybe what they are doing though, is submitting you to guest books and then reporting you for Spamming?! So I would contact the search engines and let them know, just in case you get canned.
Yep. And with the issue of guestbook signing being so well known, if Google did in the future start penalizing for this SEOs would hiring bored teenagers to sign their client's competitors to thousands of guestbooks to get them banned. No way Google is going to make sabotaging a site this easy. In other words, your competitor just unwittingly did you a favor. ;) Although, unless your site's PR is incredibly low I doubt that these guestbook links are doing you much good.
But isn't the trouble with this that Spamming guest books pays? As Google will not do anything?
The question might as well be 'does it pay?'
If Google cannot fairly penalise webmasters for signing guestbooks, that's not to say they won't make sure that no benefit is derived.
It's entirely possible that Google does/will include something in their algo to diminish/nullify any PR value from guestbooks.
Just do look for back links for most Spam sites and you will see them. If they are shown, they clearly have benefit. If in any doubt, go to the guest book and see if it has PR.
My answer - yes (especially if they decide to penalise them)
Result - Google knows this could be out of your control (Googleguy [and Plasma - I have my suspicions :)] know so i'm sure Google knows), link in guestbook = no increase in PR, but no penalty.
If that's the case, sounds fair to me.
Just tossin in some food for thought.
> link in guestbook = no increase in PR, but no penalty
I agree that would be great, but it aint the case. If you do a [google.com...] on Google, just have a look. If you see a guest book listed, it is giving that (www.domain.com) site PR and relevancy too probably.
My guess is that Google so far hasn't seen this as materially distorting the SERPs yet. Generally speaking, guestbooks have low PR, which is diluted by lots of links on them. While I'm sure some people have gotten high in the SERPs signing guestbooks, I doubt it happens that often. If Google does see this ever being a material problem, I would expect them to do something about it. Most guestbook pages should be spottable algorithmically, and the links on them not allowed to pass on PR. Thus, in almost all cases Google should be able to stop any benefit from signing guestbooks by an algo tweak.
No problem ;-)
Take a look at the other thread I started about Yahoo listings being worth anything in Google, and Google telling webmasters to submit to Yahoo if they are having trouble getting listed. Maybe they should add a caveat "a few guest books too".
I just wonder if the right guest book link can be worth more then the wrong Yahoo link?
Most definitely. One example I quickly found:
[dir.yahoo.com...]
That directory cat is just PR3. If you can find a guestbook on some obscure site that has managed to be blessed with high PR, and that guestbook has very few listings, it could easily be worth more than some Y directory listing. The problem with trying to get anywhere with Google is that guestbooks with high PR and few entries are very rare. For example, I have a site that is PR6. Now, if I could find that mythical, fabled guestbook with a PR8 and very few links on it, I might be able to get to a PR7. However, the odds of finding a guestbook like this is astronomical.
This is a point I have made before about the idea of a penalty for signing guestbooks. To start, lots of people have signed guestbooks totally unaware of Google PR, and their reason is they want exposure hoping that people will click on the link. And, I happen to know a woman who knows nothing about PR, but always makes sure to sign any guestbooks she finds when surfing because she just happens to think that signing guestbooks is neat. Over a couple years, someone like her could easily have signed over 100 guestbooks. Thus, the logic that no webmaster would sign 100+ guestbooks without the intent of scamming search engines is flat out wrong. As such, if guestbook signing is seen as a problem by Google, it is their own damned fault for counting such links in the first place.
i don't remember that he has ever said explicitly anything about signing guestbooks!
From what I've seen, if all of your PR is being generated by guestbook type links, then you have a much greater chance of getting whacked. On the otherhand, if your site has a solid amount of "normal links" I don't think you have anything to worry about.
Well, you should search some more.
I can try to clear things up about guestbooks a little. We don't currently penalize for guestbooks in our automatic scoring. It's something that a competitor could do to another company, so our automatic scoring doesn't use it.Investigating a manual spam complaint involves looking at all the evidence, direct and indirect, that we can find. djgreg, I noticed that several months ago, your domain was near the top of the list in terms of numbers of guestbook signed. At that time, signing guestbooks was a less-discussed technique. That could have been a factor for your domain.
From the october 2002 update thread. Seems pretty explicit to me.
Read this very carefully, many people read it and misinterpret what he said and didn't say.
Nothing in the automatic scoring.
If a manual check is done, it might look bad, and cause them to dig a little deeper, looking for something else.
If you are squeeky clean, and have plenty of other links, you should be okay.
