Googles reaction to Vortals

Need opinions here...

[OntheEdge]

I've read through the Google TOS, thousands of posts here and plenty of Brett's fine artcles. However I'm still unclear about what Google thinks of Vortals (in my case a regional portal).
Assume it's a well rounded site with plenty of relevant content, and a directory of only related links (within the topic of the vortal).
Have any of you had experiance with this?
I've heard of portals that focus on being solely a directory being classified as a link farm and banned.
Some input would be welcome

[Yidaki]

>I've heard of portals that focus on being solely a directory
>being classified as a link farm and banned.

Can't be the only reason they were banned. IMHO spezialized vortals are a important part of the future of searching - they'll don't replace general se's like google but they contribute a lot to the information retrival game.

I run a specialized directory / search engine (call it vortal) - the directory isn't the only thing allthough it's the most comprehensive part of my site. I also have a lot of usefull articles and stuff related to my topic. I'm doing really well at google. But there are some points that are very important for the success of a vortal:

- Staying specialized
Nobody needs another general web directory, but specialized vortals can be a better ressource than a general se - that's why every major se plans to theme pages ;)

- Carefull linking
DO NOT link the external sites using their standard url. This is prob the most important thing! Use a cgi redirect script and block robots from crawling it. You can never rest assured that the sites that are listed within your vortal don't start to cheat one day and get a penalty. The last month i started to add 2 dedicated links per category - with their full url (no cgi redirect). These sites are the best available in their category and i deeply check their behaving / promotion practices / spamming before i add them as recommended links (not payed / sponsored).

- Don't go for directory only
You allready said, you have a lot of content surrounding your directory. That is good - a vortal is more than a directory of links and therefor should offer usefull additional content.

I should definitely read here at WebmasterWorld about theming and pyramids - you can have a lot of fun working out a nice pyramid structure for your vortal and google will give you nice credits for your work!

HTH

[rfgdxm1]

Unless most of the sites you listed also linked back to you, this isn'ta link farm. However, as Yidaki points out, you do have to worry about the possibility of linking to a bad neighborhood.

[kovacs]

DO NOT link the external sites using their standard url. This is prob the most important thing! Use a cgi redirect script and block robots from crawling it.

I've been reading up in the SE about this and I can't find a consensus about whether Google will follow these links and whether they transfer PR. Do you have any recommendations as to what types of scripts or link syntax to use to facilitate, or avoid, spidering of the links? Or is it an issue of excluding your cgi-bin directory with robots.txt?

[rcjordan]

IMO, Google loves vortals.

>I can't find a consensus about whether Google will follow these links and whether they transfer PR.

Some of the mods here recently ran a test on one of my sponsor's sites that links out through a click-counter cgi-bin script. The link had been there through several index cycles and was relatively simple re variables (only 1, the link id). Apparently, Google didn't follow it.

[Fnord]

Google will follow redirect links, but if you want them to show up as links to the other site, the script has to return a 302 Found.

I haven't used Perl/CGI much since probably 1998, but I know that when I use PHP to send a "Location:" header out, that generates a 302 Found code.

[worker]

While reciprocal link requirements may be frowned upon, would a Vortal still be viewed as a 'link farm' by requiring reciprocal links?

Wouldn't the fact that all the linking sites have a similar 'theme' mitigate the 'link farm' issue somewhat?

For example, say you have a WIDGET Vortal and that there are 5 different types of WIDGET's in the world. Is it wrong for the Vortal to offer a directory of websites for each type of WIDGET, but only list the websites that link to the Vortal first?

You would end up with a WIDGET Vortal, with 5 categories of WIDGET directories and each one would only list sites specific to that type of WIDGET.

Likewise, each WIDGET site would link back to the appropriate directory, and not to the main Vortal site.

Does that make any sense? And isn't that different than a "link farm"?

[chiyo]

In my humble opinion, reciprocal linking isnt a link farm, though personally I dont think a directory that requires a link back to be included can ever become close to comprehensive, relevant or of high quality, as some of the most established and best content sites in the vortal category would not see a link back for a listing which may or may not "count" in terms of PR being an equal exchange for a listing. You would end up with those who really "need" the listing! For example, we refuse 99% of suggestions from vortals of this nature. Some even ask for a graphic link ala award sites etc.!

However, personal feelings aside, I think a linkfarm is a network of sites that contain links back to each other site in the network, not just one. So, on theme or not, I dont think your site would qualify as a link farm.

[beachlover]

I can second that what rcjordan said.

We are running a foreign travel-vortal with almost 2.000 links in it. Itīs static and we have almost 9.000 single pages in the Google DB. The PR has been a very stable 6 almost from the start.

We use a click-counter cgi-bin script, too. No problems so far :-)

[Yidaki]

The script is use just has one variable (Link ID) and makes a simple 302 redirect. It is blocked for spiders via robots.txt. They just can't and don't follow the links.

I use such a setup for different reasons:
- protecting my site from a bad neighbourhood penalty
- protecting my compilation from theft by home grown crawlers
- click counting ... just for fun and to have a monthly top visited list

Since PR isn't transfered to the linked sites, seo aware people might think that being listed at my vortal isn't a good deal. However, i don't run my vortal just for seo aware webmasters and pr is not all of the game. Some sites that are listed within my directory receive a lot of traffic - so it's worth to be listed. And most of the people that visit my site don't mind about pr - they just want to find some good resources.

Now, because a directory without any outgoing links seems somewhat closed and google dosn't see it as a hub, i started to make these two dedicated links per category to open my hub for crawlers and receive some credits for it.

Comparing link farms with well structured vortals is like comparing apples and oranges. There are a lot of "directories" (Zeus like) that are only done for PR reasons. Doing something only for pr games is dangerous and isn't of any special value for visitors.

Reciprocal links: i don't make them mandatory - i asked here at WebmasterWorld in the past for opinions on this and the majority said "don't make them mandatory". And surprise: many people link back anyway because they like my site and are proud to be listed. ;)

In general i don't answer reciprocal link request if they are obviously only for pr. Allthough i also want to have as much pr as possible i don't deal with it.