LinksManager

OK? or another Zeus?

[mayor]

I see linksmanager in my log file grabbing my site's link page. Checking it out, I find it to be some automated or semi-automated links management site that touts "LinksManager can help you find link swap partner fast and easy".

I had recieved unsolicited emails from this place but trashed them, not wanting to particpate in anything that even resembles link farming.

But now I find I'm participating somehow. Apparently a link exchange request I received turned out to be an exchange solicitation administered by LinksManager and I wasn't even aware of it. I can't tell which exchange link is involved, but I suppose if I dig a bit I can figure it out.

I also see where they use Linkpartners.com for setting up link exhanges.

So, please tell me, is this thing safe or should I ban LinksManager in my robots.txt or otherwise?

I would especially appreciate a thumbs up or thumbs down from Googleguy on this one, as I'm sure others are running into it too.

[fathom]

Does "LinksManager" and/or "Linkpartners.com" bear any resemblence to your topics or themes?

If so... and your into targeting "links" to visitors... might be a good go.

If not... Rubbish! and get rid of it... more potential for harm than potential for good.

[mayor]

I don't know what link it was involved in but I'm sure it was on topic because I won't exchange links with sites that aren't relevant, and I do personally check every one.

[asomani]

Hi,

I am not very sure about their service. I guess it is a link management service.

I had a similar experience. It was crawling my site every day giving me around quite a few hundred hits everyday.

While working on my link building campaign, I came
across many sites that use automated software for managing and keeping track of their incoming links. These days the search engines are strict and sometimes web masters are in a awe when they find that their web site has got banned for an unknown reason.

On principle basis, I stay away and keep my clients from automated software for link exchange. But sometimes the search engines even penalise you for linking to site who has done something unethical. So I do not request link from a web master who uses automated sw for link exchange.

Initially I was unaware and linked to a few sites that used this particular sw. But I have dropped those links now.

But Linksmanager was visiting my site everyday. So finally I sent Linksmanager.com an email and requested them to stop their spider. They responded promptly and now I am free of its spider.
They also suggested me to add this in my robots.txt file.

User-agent: linksmanager
Disallow: /

Hope this helps.

I am sure that their staff team is very coperative. But in SEO the SEs are the lifeblood of our business and I personally would not like to put myself or my client in something which may even have one percent chances of being called as spam.

[leef50]

This confuses me. I too have linked to 1 or 2 sites that must have been part of linksmanager. Now, I have links to those sites as recip links and the linksmanager robot crawls my my site to check that a link is on my site to their website. i.e. for each site you link to that uses the linkmanager, a new linkmanager robot (i assume for their site) then periodically crawls my site to find the URL. This means (an i have noticed this) an increased in linkmanager robot activity every time u link to a new site using these facilities.

Now, I do not see what harm this does if you link to them. Since all it provides (from what I gather) is the ability to check that the site you/they exchanged links with still have a link in place. So it seems it is not at all like a link farm but mearly an automated way to check that all your recip links are still in place.

I am not a part of this scheme but as already stated have linked 1 or 2 sites that do participate in the scheme.

This thread has worried me a little and for the sake of 2 links it may be worth playing safe and removing them and contacting linksmanager to stop crawling me and also add the robots.txt directive posted above.

leef50

[liana]

I've heard of this service too. From what I know they just check for the presence of the reciprocal links. GoogleGuy's opinion would be helpful...

[mayor]

It's the LinkPartners association that worries me more than the link checking.

But I'm not go to take any action until we get hopefully get a response from Googleguy. I'd hate to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.