Someone trying to get me banned from Google!

[netnerd]

I have two widget related sites and i have just found hundreds of spammy subdomains of a site all pointing at them.

The site itself uses javascript to redirect to another affilite site that i have nothing to do with.

Im frightened google will think i have done this to make links.

What should i do - wheres the best place to report this?

[Marcia]

If you're brave and have nothing to worry about with your own site I'd report it here and give a clear explanation with all the info they request

[google.com...]

[hutcheson]

This is not a problem. Google will bin you based on who you link to, not who links to you.

It is not, technically speaking, a ban: merely that if you only link you members of your gang, the spam police depreciate your votes accordingly. If your site's link patterns ever start looking less artificial, and you actually get legitimate-looking inbound links, you'll start being allowed out of the cellar when low-class visitors come.

But the point is, it's YOUR site's link patterns that will cause YOUR site's links to be ignored. That's not anything any other site can do to you.

Of course, this wouldn't stop some stupid spammer from trying it anyway....lots of people try lots of stupid stuff. Don't sweat it. That's that much less time they have to build a website competitive with yours.

[pele]

Hi Hutcheson
But the point is, it's YOUR site's link patterns that will cause YOUR site's links to be ignored. That's not anything any other site can do to you.

I was wondering what happens if a porn site had hijacked a site that I had linked to? I recently discovered one of the links I had was not what I had originally linked! I deleted it when I noticed it but was curious if it had potential to do any damage.
;)

[hutcheson]

Linking TO other sites can cause you trouble, IF your link pattern is artificial. That is, if you're linking to a whole bunch of porn sites owned by different people, there's no problem. If you're linking to 100 porn sites, and 99 of them are doorways to each other, then you've got a problem. If you're linking to 100 sites of which several turn out to be bad eggs, again no problem.

You have to do two things to get on Google's bad side: (1) link to sites that do very sleazy things (which you may occasionally do by accident, since a human visitor won't see cloaking, hidden text, etc.); (2) link to sites that all link to each other (but hardly anyone else links to them) -- and this you can't do by accident.

[Silent_Bob]

I was under the impression that sites linking to you could do you damage. What about doorway sites?

I've seen a lot of these crop up lately. I thought these were supposed to be penalised. One site I've come accross is even titled "<offending websites> doorway page" and yet the doorway site and the shop it links to both rank very highly and were unaffected by any of this years updates. On the other hand lots of clean sites I know of got hammered by Florida and Brandy.

[netnerd]

Hmm

Im not sure if im that brave - i have used quite a lot of reciprocal links on one of the sites.

[caryl]

In today's Google, Links are the foundation of your placement in the serps. Without links, the best site in the world would be nowhere.

If you think of backlinks more like building blocks and the more building blocks in your foundation, the higher your house will be.

Google does not need to ban anybody! If your links (building blocks) are all from a few sites and Google decides to discount those links, your foundation has just crumbled and down you will go.

If you get links from unstable sites, you are vulnerable to their ups and downs as well.

Link farms, by there very nature, are so interlinked that if only a few sites fall, the whole bunch can come tumbling down.

The key to stability is to get many links from many different sites. If you get links from older, more established sites, this is the most stable foundation you can build.