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Mysterious backlink issue

         

superpower

8:00 am on Dec 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I've been linked from a major portal in my industry to my front page for about 4 months. It still doesn't show up on my list of Google backlinks. All kinds of other riff raff shows up but not that important one.

Their "resources" page which I'm listed on is PR8. My link shows up on the Google cached snapshot of their page.

My website is PR6 and I have a reciprocal link from my front page.

There are no penalties or anything either site as far as I can tell.

Any ideas what the deal is? I'm trying to be patient but 4 months doesn't seem normal.

Just Guessing

1:24 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I can confirm that links from my links.htm and links.shtml pages (PR5) are not showing up as backlinks for the pages which they link to. Some of these are long standing links (nearly a year old) and one of these pages has fewer than 20 links including internal navigation. Links from other pages on the same sites do show up as backlinks.

I do not know if these pages are still passing PR, but since Florida some of the linked pages have dropped rank or disappeared for some search terms that are part of the anchor text used.

I do see backlinks showing from pages where "links" is part of the file name.

I can't believe Google would use anything this crude in the algorithm, but, as you say, anything is possible these days.

ukgimp

1:29 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It may be crude, but it is an easy way to nuke a technique that has caused G some difficulty in recent times.

so why not :)

mil2k

1:46 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Any crude method of blocking pr of links.htm as a filename is definitely not google style.

How do you think guestbooks were filtered? ;)

some difficulty..

LOL that sure is an understatement ;)

Just Guessing

3:08 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Just done some more investigation on this, and there is something in it.

The links from my links.htm page are being discounted as backlinks for the target pages both in the backlinks display and in an allinanchor search.

I did a search for kw1 kw2 kw3 which is used as the anchor text for one of the links on my links.htm page. The links page and the target page both showed up in the results.

Then did a search for allinanchor: kw1 kw2 kw3 and the target page did not show up in the results. (the links page is the only page that links with this particular anchor text.) Only 2 other pages show in the results, so the target page wasn't buried in the results!

The links page may well be still passing on PR, because the target page has a surprisingly high PR.

The links page has toolbar PR5 and has nothing untoward on the page. Links are internal and external, both reciprocal and otherwise.

I tried this with the anchor text of a couple of other links on this page where the anchor text is very long and very specific, and the same thing happens.

Can't leap to conclusions from this one page - Anybody else got any examples? (Not that there's much hope of finding another example of a single link using unique anchor text in the world of SEO!)

One or two of my pages may have dropped ranking because of this, but other pages have dropped for other reasons.

Kwix

3:20 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Nope, can't help there. Just revamped my outbound Links (was using themeindex.html - zeus) just before Florida. I have been spidered and cached since then, but nothing showing outside.

SlyOldDog

3:23 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



There could be a simple explanation for both these cases:

Q: Why don't I have the pagerank?

Is the linking page in frames? Right click the page where the link is and get properties to see where the link really came from. Paste that URL into your browser. Is it still pagerank 8?

Or - is the page dynamic? Is the pagerank you are looking at really an 8 or is it a page with?z=blah at the end? Any blah can show an 8 even if the page doesn't exist.

Or it could be the penalty for the linking site which can own PR but not pass it on (as was stated by someone else here). Highly unlikely if the link is not showing either. I've seen this penalty and I still saw the backlink.

Q: Why isn't the link there?

Is the linking page really above PR4 (see above)? Most likely Google will not bother showing the link if it isn't.

Google doesn't show all backlinks anyway. It doesn't mean it doesn't count.

Then there are a few other reasons stated above: Robots.txt, robots nofollow tag, javascript links, etc.

Just Guessing

3:59 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



In my case, I think the Pagerank probably is being passed on even though the backlink is not showing.

Backlinks often don't show up on Google. The surprising thing is the allinanchor search doesn't bring up the target page even though both pages show in a normal search for the same term (and have done for many months).

The links page is plain HTML, no frames, no robots problems, no nofollow meta tags, pagerank 5, no javascript etc. (it's my own links page I'm looking at!).

Eljaybe

4:06 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



My links page is links.html and we put all our links there. So is the consensus that this is not a good idea?

Also, is Javascript bad to have on your web pages? I read somewhere that Google may penalize for Javascript?

My site has dropped from page 1 to page 34 of search results for our best keyword phrase.

c1bernaught

4:13 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



It was speculation some time ago that any page named links.htm or links.html were being devalued. This happened some time ago. If I remember correctly it coincided with what appeared to be a crack down on selling PR.

The issue came up again during the Dominic update.

Just Guessing

4:27 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Eljaybe, Naming your own links page links.html will not cause a problem to your own site. But it is just possible that it may not benefit the sites that you link to.

Javascript is fine if it is doing something useful for your users. But Google does not follow Javascript links, although I think there has been some evidence to the contrary in other threads here. Just make sure you have HTML links for your own site structure that Google can follow.

SlyOldDog

5:14 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I think I read Brett Tabke saying that Google follows java links now.

Well, he's the man who knows GoogleGuy, so I guess it's true.

allinanchor search doesn't bring up the target page even though both pages show in a normal search for the same term (and have done for many months).

Any reason why it should? The destination page would only show up if it has outgoing links on it with those keywords in the link.

Just Guessing

5:56 pm on Dec 12, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Any reason why it should? The destination page would only show up if it has outgoing links on it with those keywords in the link.

We are getting a bit confused here. The allinanchor search brings up pages with the search term in links to the page. Check what it says on the advanced search page!

Oaf357

9:35 pm on Jan 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Well I'm not seeing my links page (named /links/) show up in any backlinks nor any sub-page or directory of /links/.

I'm going to change it but I have two questions:

1) What should I name it to? I don't want to pick another poison word. The common names are out (especially Directory and Resources) but what about Favorites or Bookmarks?

2) Should I even considering doing a 301 redirect. Changing the name will probably get the page back into the good graces of Google but will a 301 redirect lead to a continuance of the penalty?

This really sucks and I have no choice but to correct the issue due to the marketing I'm trying to do with my web site. Thanks in advance for any advice.

kaled

10:01 am on Jan 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sugestions for alternate names (bearing in mind that a link is also a unit of measurement).

chains, yards, miles, furlongs, km, metres, cm, mm

I doubt google's stemming algos apply to file names so any of these should be ok. Otherwise use a sequence of random chars.

Kaled.

nileshkurhade

10:34 am on Jan 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This page already has a PR. WOW

jim_w

3:28 pm on Jan 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I don’t know about any of this theory. I have a links page called links.html. It has PR of 4 and our index page has a PR of 5. It contains 36 outbound links with 33 of them themed and 3 at the bottom that are friends, including 1 to an online radio station that has nothing to do with our space.

If my out bound links are hurting the people I link to, what would stop ones competitors from setting up a links page to all their competitors?

Eljaybe

4:32 pm on Jan 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have two separate links.htm pages containing links on two different topics. (These links pages are under separate sub-domains.)
One links.htm page has a decent PR, the other links.htm page has no PR at all. They are both set up using the same format, just different links. I've gone through every link on the page with no PR and all links seem relevant and they all work. It doesn't seem to make sense?
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