Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have noticed a website in google doing very well indeed in the SERPS for almost every prime keyword in its sector and its one of the top three sectors on the net!
This site email spams sites on mass asking for anchor links and in return gives one or sometimes two return links in two directory sites with reasonable PR that it has involvement in.
Currently i have seen an email with the latest link offer from them some 8 times! sent to different client sites.
For example. Lets say they want to push the keyword blue widgets for their page abc.com/blue-widgets. They will hit webmasters with link exchanges pointing to this internal page with one of a few variations of link to it. ie "search blue widgets" "Blue widgets found here" etc, etc - you get the idea.
The result of this is that slowly over time they have risen all the way up the serps. They even employ a company who work on the one directory to help spam email out on their behalf.
I since discovered that the same company do the same three way link request spam on behalf of another site that is also rising rapidly to the top of the serps in the same sector. In fact the directory company approched me to ask if i wanted them to do the same for one of my own sites! Obviously i told them where to get off but i would image a number of other webmasters could be attracted to this arrangement.
So thats two sites using this technique to secure many links both high in the serps in a commercial sector, both using this proven method of securing many one way links.
Now the reason for starting this thread is that i would have thought this method of securing links was classed as Google Gaming? but evidently google either cant detect it or lets it slip by yet its done by the two sites involved so that they rank high in google by securing many one way anchor links for the prime keywords they need
Would you agree that this is Gaming and can result in a possible ban? or am i over reacting to this?
I get emails like that all the time and just forward them to Google :)
Is it worth reporting it? and if i do will google do anything about it?
Also, it cant be easy for google to spot this. After all as far as it looks the sites are just attracting a good number of good links over a period and as both sites in question are a few years old they will get away with it.
Unless google get one of these emails from the sites it will go undetected. Currently both sites are cleaning up as a result! On face of it crime pays by the looks of this
Is it worth reporting it? and if i do will google do anything about it?
Google apparently likes to adjust the algo to handle things like this. So if you do report it, don't expect fast visible results.
Also, it cant be easy for google to spot this ...... Unless google get one of these emails from the sites it will go undetected.
I'm not too sure about that. Spotting these situations and then working them into the algo effectively might take a while, but I suspect it will happen.
It's just I really hate getting those stupid emails so I just forward them on to Google for the heck of it.
If I've got time to kill, sometimes I'll reply and ask them why should I give site A link which is related to my site to get a link from a worthless directory that has nothing to do with my site.
It's funny, nobody ever answers back!
Spend your time building quality content.
With links only put links on your site that will benefit your customers. Exchange with sites in or related to your content - do not link to any old site.
You may have fallen from a PR7 to a PR4 because you may have lost a link or two from a high PR site and that is what knocked your PR back.
If you game google you should get caught out over time - however as stated in this thread two websites i know of are clearly gaming google and cleaning up as a result and are not being detected. Other webmasters here have found similar situations.
I always tell clients to do things by the book but sites that win by gaming google dont help my cause.
Cheers
Rich
