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I do have personal experience with a similar thing and have also experimented with it. It did cause an obvious degrade with my serps. I would suggest staying away from doing this.
Cheerz.
wow. I feared this. Did your SERPS improve and how long after you removed your sitewide links?
also, how bad did they degrade?
thanks,
If the theory is correct, then would you say its best to only keep the "Website Designed By ..." on the Home page of the clients website?
If you can not be penalised for links beyond your control (i.e. all incoming links) I fail to see how a site wide link could damage rankings.
If this is the case, perhaps we should all go and buy some low-budget site wide links for our competitors :-)
Maybe Google have some way of de-valuing "site designed by..." links; but who cares, the link is an advert and will be worth it's weight in gold if the right user arrives at the site.
There is nothing to stop happy clients from placing these links on their sites themselves so effectively it could be out of the designer's hands. I have been doing this for almost three years and I am not aware of it causing any problems.
Google says that there is nothing that one site can do to harm another.
What they really say is there is "almost" nothing a competitor can do to hurt your site.
There is a touch of wiggle room in their statement.
Sneaky redirects and site wide links are part of the almost....
that would be the smart way, but I know you can knock a page and presumably a site out. Two of my money pages on one site are out. A competitor decided to add them --full title and everything-- to 5 blogs each. Now I've been emailing to have them removed...hoping it works.
I couldn't do it to CNN but momandpop.com better pray. Running a business just got more complicated with Google. You have to worry about what others do, not just your actions.
There is a difference between harming and noth helping.
Unless you're doing great and 2 weeks after a sitwide you end up on page 14.
Unless you're doing great and 2 weeks after a sitwide you end up on page 14.
And lots of people can change absolutely nothing and have the exact same thing happen.
Sorry, that doesn't even make it to circumstantial evidence. If it happens to hundreds of sites, it *starts* to show some sort of correlation
As a designer, that little link has brought in a lot of work.
I put it on there before I know what Google was, put it on since, and still rank very well for what I want to.
Will always put it on there. My main focus is site design, not Google. If Google went away tomorrow, people would still want web sites and they could find my services by those links at the bottom of other sites.
If your letting what Google does run your business and are worried about it, then don't do it if you believe what you have heard.
No they would not.
>> Your joking right! In the last two months, I've built two sites for businesses that could give a flip less about where they fall in Google or any other search engine for that matter. They wanted the sites as tools for their customers. In fact, a previous site I built asked if I could get him off of Google because he can not handle the extra business. Both of the new sites did not use a search engine to find me. Word of mouth from other customer and oh yes that little link at the bottom of those customers site drove them to me. Hmmmm imagine that!
People wanted them before Google and they will want them when Google is gone. If you don't believe that then you should probably find another line of work!
The world of web design does not evolve around Google. Perhaps the world of SEO does for some, but web design and development will always be around.
[edited by: phpdude at 4:38 am (utc) on Nov. 30, 2004]
A lot of people have been telling me that.
Think of google as a platform that enables commerce. Think of 30(your doomsday scenario) to 80% of the population using that platform to make purchasing decisions.
Now think what would happen to your clients business if they linked to you, you linked back to them from your portfolio and you were tagged as an unworthy site, due to an algorithm tweak. Try recovering hundreds and thousands of client sites that have been hit because of an unknown tweak.
It is all fine you're designing sites for your neighbourhood barber shop, if you're designing anything related to commerce, you have to start thinking of google in the old brick and mortar sense -- as a yellow or white pages. A delisting could spell disaster for a small business.
A designer if he's worth his money, has to take the mindset of a chess player. You have plan for the best case scenario and the worst case scenario and be aware of what second and third generation repercussions of your actions can be.
Sit down and talk to an architect and keep in mind ... as much as they want to design for clients, they have to keep building codes, safety issues and a multitude of other factors in mind.
( Any one want to hire me? This web thing doesnt seem to be working out .. I've been told off by three people today.. )
I am also experienced of this designed & deleloped & promoted & hosted issue at the bottom of the sites that designer company usually does with the project either they designed it promoted it, hosted or vica versa... But as far as this link is concern, i think there are a number of factor that google use to consider while weighting these type of link at any site(s).
1 - A site xyz.com hosted by abc.com on the same IP and a number of the same industry are also hosted on the same server on the same ip. This cud make a problem.
2 - A link of the hosting company or designing company on the project will give benifit to it.
3 - And if this link is not giving any thing to the hosting company, then there is nothing to loose for them. because your link on any site can not harm you untill unless you are not involved in link exchange prg with the site or vica verca. Because anybody can create a link to any site with or without your permision.
4 - Project done by the hosting or designing company will not get any benifit of this link. and also if any loose is going to be gone this is only for the site having hosting company link on their site. In this case hosting or designing company also in the safe hands.
I have seen a number of sites hosted on the same server having bottom link to the company and almost gone from G but hosting company still appears in the SERPS with Good PR. So this link wont effect the hosting company but this is really not gud for the site.
may be my views are wrong :)
Thanks
Exp..
Now think what would happen to your clients business if they linked to you, you linked back to them from your portfolio and you were tagged as an unworthy site, due to an algorithm tweak. Try recovering hundreds and thousands of client sites that have been hit because of an unknown tweak.
Are you speaking from experience?
Perhaps some of the techniques you use are enough to make you cautious of this type of scenario, which you think may result in a "domino" style ban for all of your clients.
To be honest if you really have hundreds and thousands of clients maybe this type of link would be little dangerous for you! I would imagine most design agencies have hundreds of clients at most.
What does the future of the Internet hold if people become any more afraid to link to each other than they already are... this is ridiculous (IMO)!
if you look at how good the "free counter" and "free stats" like websites are doing thanks to site wide links from thousands of users, then sitewide links are not an issue.
"When website design agencies write a website for a client, they usually place a hyperlink on the footer of the website back to their own website i.e. 'Website Designed by XYZ'. If this footer exists on Every page of the website, how does Google perceive this? Would it help, in terms of Inbound Links, would the site be penalised, doesn't it matter or the agencies better off only placing the Website Designed by.. once on the home page?"
Well .. am I right in suggesting that these links are on the new website? If so, then I would have thought Page Rank is leaking out of the website, instead of feeding the other internal pages. Therefore a rank drop is most likely.
I must be getting the wrong end of the stick with the original post, as a lot of you have said 'things out of your control' ... But this is, in your control - ask the guy who made your website for the FTP details! You can remove the link that he put at the bottom of every one of your pages.
My concern would be if the designer might be part of a 'bad neighbourhood' by having link associations with other, risky clients.
Seriously though - where do you draw the line?
As a website design company we want to link to the sites we've created... who wouldn't.
What if they employ a bad SEO and get banned - are we to be punished for having designed the site and linked to it as an example?
Perhaps I need to create a linking script that is client generated and search engines can't follow.
Who knows. This guessing game could go on forever........
