Matt Cutts for Google on reciprocal links

Why I disagree...

[rekitty]

Say you are planning to move to another state and need to find a Realtor to help you buy a home there. What's the best way to find a decent Realtor in the state where you are moving?

a) Go to Google and search on [statename Realtor]

b) Go to your local real estate agent's website (check your fridge for a magnet) and look in their reciprocal link directory.

Really, give it a try. Here's what I see:

Google: a bunch of big national real estate websites, some directories of Realtors, affiliate sites, MFA sites, scraper sites, and an occasional local Realtor site. Some decent links but also a ton of crap.

On my local real estate agent's website: there is a directory of states and in each state there are links to bunch of links to Realtor's websites. Each Realtor has a description of their location and specialty. That's exactly what I wanted, and it looks like a human has made sure these websites are for real. Nice.

Repeat this this exercise with dentists, bed and breakfasts, chiropractors, restaurants, auto repair, etc. I see similar results.

So, I ask Matt (and Google): how are reciprocal links not relevant? For many search terms they seem far more relevant than Google's own search results.

Finally I offer a little tip for those at Google and the other search engines: finding and using these **human edited** reciprocal link directories as part of the ranking algorithm for search terms like these will actually help improve the relevance of your search results. May the most relevant search engine win.

[edited by: sugarrae at 3:04 pm (utc) on June 24, 2006]
[edit reason] keep it civil please [/edit]

[whitenight]

Fair enough.

Obviously, the "crack down" on bought links never got implemented...

And from what I can see "reciprocal links" haven't been discounted either.. yet.

I do see sites dumping their links pages because of MC's comments and that affecting rankings but I do not see any evidence of a dramatic re-weighting of recip links in general.

I would expect a much more noticeable change in the rankings of ALL SERPS.

[BigDave]

I said it was his personal blog, and he can say what he wants and you have to respect his right to do that. But you should still understand that Matt does know how Google works. If he says they are going to start cracking down on something, it always seems that they do end up cracking down on such things and there are almost immediate post by those that suddenly find themselves the targest of those crackdowns.

As for s site that seems to survive one of those crackdowns, there are amny possible reasons. It just might be that the links that the site buys from that network are not being discounted, but it might also be that the site would have ranked #1 anyway for other reasons.

It's like when the highway patrol publicises that they are conducting a crackdown on speeders. It does not mean, and no one expects that they will stop every speeder. It does mean that they will be going after more of them. Is it a scare tactic? Yeah, but it isn't ONLY a scare tactic it is also a warning for what they are really doing.

You may understand that there is a good chance that you may not get dinged in any particular google cleaup attempt, but is

[whitenight]

hmm. I keep pretty good track of a whole slew of keywords and sites that fit certain criteria in each keyword mix ie:

mostly recips
mostly "natural" one ways
mostly bought one ways
historically "authoritative"
combinations of the above
etc., etc.

I'm simply not seeing any evidence of nearly any of the "warnings" MC has issued in the past few months.

What I do see is the normal tweaking of a few weighting factors here and there (ie a normal update, a "sandbox" release and a "bad data" glitch that's been acknowledged and rolled back).

But I do not see the massive change in rankings that would occur to specific sites or groups of sites for major implementations of those "warnings".

Can't say I've read any threads indicating the same.