Related sites - Thoughts

(My 200th post)

[Dino_M]

1. Do related links carry more "points" in the google algo?

2. If so what determines related -

Could it be - Site B links to site A and C therefore site A and C are viewed as related.

A link to site C from site A would carry more weight?

I used to go with the on page relevance of a page, but with some experiments now two months old, I'm not seeing the expected results.

[edited by: Dino_M at 3:06 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2002]

[troels nybo nielsen]

Congrats, Mr 200!

Links from related pages certainly _ought_ to carry more PR weight. It's my impression that relationship between to pages is mostly measured by comparing keywords. My own experiences point in that direction.

[vitaplease]

> Could it be - Site B links to site A and C therefore site A and C are viewed as related

something to that effect - more so if: D also links to A and C and E links to A and C as well.

Should a link from a related site (page actually) carry more weight?

Depends: check heavy guestbook signers (several hundred plus backlinks from guestbooks), check their similar pages, and the spammers are grouped together. Should it help if they also link to each other? ;)

Similar pages only tend to give good results for externally well linked pages such as home(index)pages.

I doubt Google is giving extra weight at the moment. Also manipulative link farming comes to mind with A links to B anc C and B links to C as well etc..

[annej]

>>Also manipulative link farming comes to mind with A links to B anc C and B links to C as well etc.<<

The problem is that many niche hobby sites would have the same linking pattern. Also narrow interest sites like those on a rare disease would likely have this pattern. I hope Google can tell the difference.

Anne

[europeforvisitors]

Google could use DMOZ and Yahoo listings to help identify related sites. That would work only for home pages and inside pages that were listed in the directories, of course, but it's an approach that could be used in combination with keywords.

[Dino_M]

I'm 90% convinced that the idea above works for the DMOZ sites, have not looked into yahoo.

Links from people in the same cat as you really seem to do wanders for your site. These people are not always the easiest to ask for links though.

[mayor]

IMO, it only makes sense to chase down link swaps with related, especially complementary sites. Then you have a good shot at getting some targeted traffic from the links, and that's less you have to worry about what Google does.

[troels nybo nielsen]

That's so right. Find good and relevant websites to ask for links. They will bring you motivated visitors. And then leave it to Google to find out in their own way that those links are really relevant. I personally believe that Google combine several methods to decide the relevance of a link and that they are constantly adjusting the balance between those methods.

[annej]

I prefer telling related sites about my site suggesting they might be interested in linking. I don't like to exactly trade links because I am often writing to 'widget' sites where as my site is 'widget history'.

I do link to 'widget history' sites in a special directory. Of course the ones on on 'wiget history' that have linked to me are linked back in this directory. Many are not high PR but they are informative in this niche topic. Maybe not the best seo technique but at least I am trying to build a good neighborhood.

I guess what I am wondering is if I should build a separate page linking to all the general 'wiget' sites that have linked to me.

Anne