Link scheme loophole

[Jsanders9912]

According to [support.google.com...] ‘Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites’ may be against guidelines?

I keep seeing websites like Example.com use this strategy and benefit with high rankings (Rank #2 for Used Widget Equipment)

Is this a loophole?

For example, Example.com seems to offer a template where the footer links back to their website. I visited a few of those websites (see below) and all are hosted on the same IP.

site 1
site 2
site 3
site 4

I have also seen it on other websites like hosting companies, free templates, marketing companies and others. Does that mean this is okay to do now since these sites have no penalties?

[edited by: goodroi at 3:08 pm (utc) on Sep 26, 2016]
[edit reason] Welcome to WebmasterWorld, please follow the forum rules :) [/edit]

[rainborick]

It's generally best to ignore behaviors of competitors that appear to be beneficial even though they seem to be violating Google's Quality Guidelines. First, you can't be sure of exactly how Google is treating the violation(s). There could be other parts of their algorithms that negate the effect. Second, even if you assume Google also considers the practice to be a violation, you can't know exactly how much impact its having on the site's rankings. They could be doing so many other things well that they rank in spite of the violation. Worse, you can't be sure that someday Google won't someday decide it's time to really crack down on such things. Third, you can't be sure of how Google goes about checking for such violations. They may simply not have gotten around to dealing with the site(s) in question.

So, if the only thing you can say with any certainty is that a practice is likely to be a violation, my advice would be to move on to some more productive uses of your time and energy than trying to figure out how some sites are apparently getting away with it.

[Storiale]

We had over a million links on footer from sites we owned and many were on the same IP address. I "nofollowed" those links in March in preparation for Penguin. If things don't improve in the next 4 weeks, I will slowly take the nofollow designation away to test it. But we got great authority on 3rd party tools, but Google never rewarded us. I guess I'll know more in 4 weeks.

[engine]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Jsanders9912

Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites

If implemented it would make a mess of a massive part of the market. For example, many free CMS and forum systems include footers to the developer, or to the web design company. The safer solution for this is "nofollow". Unfortunately, in some instances as I mentioned, you're at the whim of the developer as to whether the link can be made nofollow or dropped entirely.

[Robert Charlton]

This is what can happen when Google catches up with such a situation....

Google wants me to remove links from sponsored WordPress themes
April 2012
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4445558.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[30K_a_month]

<snip>, they have powered sites up in their footer with direct anchor text for years, these sites still rank 1st.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:57 am (utc) on Sep 28, 2016]
[edit reason] removing specific, per forum Charter [/edit]