Link Exchange Networks

The hidden exploit

[Decius]

I believe I browsed and found some link exchange networks in the past but never really looked into it. Today for a very competitive phrase that I've reached #1 on Yahoo for (yet never even showed up in the first 20 pages on Google) a new site was added in the top ten. I decided to research this and did a backlink search.

Aside from the usual Blog links, this site seemed to have participated in a vast link exchange program with a large number of sites. I then explored these websites to determine the nature of the link exchange and found very few invitations or methods to communicate to the webmasters. Also, all the links and descriptions were identical on all the sites.

Eventually I realized that this site signed up in a link exchange network and just started pumping out links on a link page and got over a hundred incomming links for the exact keywords they wanted. This has shot them into the top ten, and the site in question has no PR (and in fact the main site redirects to another site). The site has almost no optimization performed on it. Meta tags, titles, and even the source is cluttered with Javascript and almost no keywords.

I have always discounted link exchanges because the consensus on the boards is that Google doesn't like that. But apparently that isn't the case. I never validated this idea myself and just accepted it because it made sense but the unintelligent ease at which this site has put itself on the first page (almost by luck) is surprising.

Further, these link exchange networks make it extremely easy to accomplish this. You sign up, put in your title, link, and description and then find relevent sites to exchange with. They link to you, you link to them, and the more links you have the more relevent Google thinks you are. Most people are happy to engage in link exchanges (especially through a common service) so this seems like a glaring "exploit" to me that counters the assumed idea that Google does not like link exchanges.

[whitenight]

Not really an exploit.

You'll hear me and others say repeatedly, take MC/Google (and people who automatically agree with them) with a grain of salt.

You can go to ANY keyword term right now and DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH and see glaring decrepencies about what people "claim" works and what actually works.

White hat works.
Grey hat works.
Black hat works.

You just have know the potential liablities and rewards of each method.

[Whitey]

You'll be OK with Yahoo. But you may experience big problems with Google, depending on how the scheme works.

Better to use other methods which are real votes of trust if you're looking for sustainable sites. I think in the long term it will serve you better as a strategy to success.

[edited by: Whitey at 9:34 am (utc) on Dec. 21, 2006]