Backwards Links & Bad Neighbourhoods

[Auteuil]

Hi,
This is my first post here so please bear with me.

Some postings elsewhere in this forum have touched on the increased advisability in the post Florida environment of being very careful to avoid having links to one's site in so-called bad neighbourhoods. Those comments were in the context of avoiding having popular "commercial" search terms being penalised by Google.

I am aware that link farms and pages on sites that have lists of links to pages that are not related to each other, are to be avoided. While I refer to <some> directory particularly in this message, the same principle may apply in similar situations with other searchable directories or searchable sites.

What I am particularly concerned about are the multiple off-topic search results pages, which include a link to my site, that are appearing in the Google search results, and whether or not that may trigger a Google penalty for my site's main search phrases.

My site was submitted to and appears in a non-commercial category page in the directory, which is fine. However, the backward link to my site and my site's description contain a word which is used, in combination with other words, by many people who search the directory. Lets say the word in question is xyz. When ever xyz is included in a search of the site, my site appears in the generated list of results. The trouble is that Google has so far put about a dozen of these search result pages in the Google database, and none of the other sites in those pages of search results have any relevance to the topic of my site, except for their use of the word xyz.

So, should I have my site removed from the site in order to avoid possible Google penalites or not?

Background: I launched a non-commercial .info information site in mid-November. My site already appears in DMOZ, Zeal, and other directories, and links to it appear in some highly relevant pages elsewhere. My home page is fresh botted about every day and it has a PR3, pending a full update of the Google index I presume. The other pages of my site are in the Google data base, but are not fresh botted. I had optimised the site within the Google "rules", as I then understood them, when I launched the site in mid-November. Then I realised that my site was cut out of Google's search results for the 4 most important search terms for my site. Those search terms are either 2 or 3 words long, and each of them contain the xyz word. While my site is a non-commercial "how-to" consumer guide, it uses many "commercial" words, including xyz, that are being targeted by Google post Florida. I am currently using tips gleaned from this forum and elsewhere to re-optimise / de-optimise my site, and removing backwards links to it from off-topic pages, in order to have the Google penalties on my most important search terms lifted, hopefully.

[edited by: Marcia at 7:54 am (utc) on Dec. 23, 2003]
[edit reason] References to specific site removed. [/edit]

[cabbie]

Welcome to WW Auteuil.
I personally wouldn't do anything to the site if I was you.Those off topic links are not going to hurt and can only help unless of course they are links from a link farm.
I would forget about google's serps for a while.Google isn't penalising you for anything.they are just ignoring you cause they feel your site doesn't have the content to back up your keywords.Get yourself more links and nore content and just concentrate on making your site as good as it can be,without worrying about optimisation.Its only a new site so dont expect miracles if you wish to be long term.
Alert appropriate people about your site and ask for links and then follows Brett's guideline to making a successful site.

[Auteuil]

Thanks for the advice Cabbie. I'll try to keep my powder dry for a while before making a lot of changes to my site, and I'll probably stick with JoeAnt for the time being. I will also continue getting authorative pages to link to mine. As to the issue of good content on my pages, it is already content rich and original: I did 6 months of research into the topic of my site before I even started its development. I will continue to add to the content as necessary, but sparingly, to avoid the "too much information" trap.

Google's apparent preference for content-rich pages is laudable, in principle at least, and it will hopefully advantage my site. However I believe that preference might be being taken too far post Florida, when one considers the short attention span of most surfers. In my site's case, for instance, while the topic of my site is popular, will many people spend enough time on it to really get benefit from it? Time and site stats may tell.

By the way, Google isn't completely "ignoring" my site. As I may have given the opposite impression in my original message, I will clarify that point now. My site appears in the first 10 search results on Google for some of the less competitive, but still relevant, keywords. So some traffic is coming from Google. However, I am definitely being penalised by Google in relation to the very competitive keywords. I've been checking that issue on Scroogle and also checking Google search results up to 300 deep for a couple of weeks, and my site does not appear in Google's search results for those crucially important search terms.

[nileshkurhade]

Even i have a Reciprocal Links Directory on my website. And previously I thought that one of the factor in PR was themed based pages. So even if your site was about blue widgets you could have a page about red widgets and other about plastic widgets. And since the page had a different theme you could link to other websites with this theme. eg. red widgets page to other red widgets site.

But after Florida I have stoped link exchange and currently i am just concentrating on adding relevant content about my main theme although i havent removed my links exchange pages.