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"Hi there friend! (... Yeah, whatever ...) I've just been visiting your web site (... sure you have ...) and I must say I was impressed. So much so that I've placed a link to you on my site, please feel free to visit at www.iamagreatbigliarwithspamsoftware.com and see your link, maybe you might even want to link to me? See ya!"
You go to the links page where yours is among the other three thousand people the guy has spammed trying to get links with Zeus or similar rubbish.
Problem is, that all these links pages are left up by the spam software so now I have about 200 backlinks showing from these link-farm-reciprocal-spam-zeus-junkmail-badneighbourhood-overcrammed nonsense pages linking to my URL using off-topic words in the linking text. So, there are several ways in which this could damage me in the rankings:
1. If many of these sites are related (ie one guy owns them on on one server with one IP address with duplicated links pages for each site) then Google will see 10-30 sites from the same IP address pointing to my site.
2. Many of these sites are bad neighbourhoods themselves with zero'd PR and no longer showing in the Google index.
3. Recently I've been researching the idea of 'anchor text keyword density', in other words, Google treats all anchor text pointing to our site as a whole and judges what your site is about by the overall keyword density of each word in that whole. (That's a very basic way of putting it but I think you get the picture). Obviously these pages are using either my URL or a short peice of off-topic text or even just 'click here' as the linking text.
4. Some of these links have been made to specific pages on my site that no longer exist so I have around 50 pages in the Google index that are just the URL (no title or description) as there is a link to that page but the page does not exist.
There are many other reasons that I know most of you can chip in with, but my main question is has anyone noticed a detrimental effect on their rankings as a result of linking from these link-farms-reciprocal-spammers or did you drop in ranking suddenly with no explanation but have hundreds of these links pointing to your site too?
Fiction: A competitor can ruin a site's ranking somehow or have another site removed from Google's index.
Fact: There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design.
Fiction: Joining a link exchange or "free-for-all" link program will boost my rankings.
Fact: Linking schemes do not increase a given site's PageRank, and will often do a site more harm than good. Many sites that advertise link-sharing programs not only offer little value, but will distribute your email address without your permission, resulting in an increased volume of unwanted mail to you.
[google.com...]
Most of the spammy linkfarms have a very low PageRank anyway - so there was negligible benefit (and a competitor could have submitted your site); and as long as you DON'T link back (ie - linking back to the spammy linkfarm IS under your control) - I interpret these 2 statements as saying its all going to be fine....
