FFA link exchange removal

Please Help

[darkroom]

i have suscribed to the ffa link exchange. Now it shows 1000 links of mine but they all go to the same website. Somebody told me that this is considered to be a spam. (google considers as black list and punishes you for it). Now, i want to remove from this ffa link exchange. How can i do it? please help me
thanks

[rfgdxm1]

Drop all links to bad neighborhoods NOW. You might get lucky and do it in time to avoid the Google Death Penalty. If it is too late and you get the Google Death Penalty, throw your domain name in the garbage and start over.

[darkroom]

please please please reply and tell me how to drop those links...please

[darkroom]

just one more thing..the 1000 links are showing in Alltheweb search engine....please advice on what i can do to remove the links..i dont want to be a victim of death penalty:-(

[msr986]

>Drop all links to bad neighborhoods NOW

What I think rfgdxm1 means by this is to get rid of any OUTGOING links that may link to a spammy site. You can do a lot of damage by putting a link on your site to a 'bad neighborhood'.

[jdMorgan]

darkroom,

Just remove the outgoing links from your site to any FFA link farms or their affiliates. Google has stated repeatedly that you won't be penalized for things which are not under your control. That means you will get a penalty for linking to bad sites, and will not get a penalty if bad sites link to you.

If Google penalized sites because of incoming links, the first thing that competitive sites would do would be to submit their top competitors' sites to every link farm on earth. Then Google would penalize the victim sites, and remove them from the index. That would be unreasonable and unfair, so Google cannot and will not let that happen.

If your site does get penalized because of what you did in the past, then e-mail Google and tell them you just found out on WebmasterWorld that FFA links are bad, and ask for forgiveness. I think I have seen reports here on WebmasterWorld that this works.

Take a deep breath, relax, and then go remove your outgoing links to FFA's (if any). :)

HTH,
Jim

[darkroom]

i havent put a link on my website....please let me know how do i remove the links from ffa websites...since they have the link..moreover the problem is that i cannot see my link on their website but it just shows that i have 1000 links with them :-((((((((

[darkroom]

hey jim....thank you soooooooooo much for your help..you made my day....i was just freaking out....do you knwo where i can go and get the email adress of the google people so that i would warn them in advance that i have mistakely added links to ffa website and please dont penalize me ..

btw guys thanks a lot for helping me out..this form is just gr8...

[bokesch]

darn it all. i subscribed one of my sites a year ago to a FFA SEO company called <snip>. They are based out of NY and they told me their FFA subscription services would help my google ranking. You think I can sue 'em?

[edited by: Woz at 8:09 am (utc) on Dec. 14, 2002]
[edit reason] no specifics please, see TOS [/edit]

[jdMorgan]

darkroom,
You can follow the links on the Google Web Site. I wouldn't bother them, unless you know that you have been penalized. They are probably way too busy to handle problems that have not happened yet.

bokesch,
If you have their claim in writing, and can prove damages, I suppose you could.

Jim

[djgreg]

Another possibility would be to add a noindex,nofollow Meta Tag to your links site, Googlebot won't index the site, and so none of this links would be counted.

[WebGuerrilla]

>>Google has stated repeatedly that you won't be penalized for things which are not under your control. That means you will get a penalty for linking to bad sites, and will not get a penalty if bad sites link to you.

That is what they say, but it simply isn't true. Google has infact penalized sites based soley on who links to the site.

I would throw the domain away and start from scratch.

[rfgdxm1]

Woah WebGuerrilla. What you are saying is that Google is flat out lying on their website about not penalizing for links from other sites. Not that I am saying you are wrong, but if you are going to accuse Google of being liars you should provide evidence.

[startup]

The following is a quote from Google.
"There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index."
"almost nothing", means there is a way or ways of a competitor successfully attacking your site.
We will never see a list of ways an attack can be carried out and be thankful that if WG does know how to do it, he is not the type of person to use the info.

[rfgdxm1]

You've changed that. The original was "Google has stated repeatedly that you won't be penalized for things which are not under your control. That means you will get a penalty for linking to bad sites, and will not get a penalty if bad sites link to you." IOW, you have to link to bad neighborhoods. It is logically possible that a competitor could screw over another by purchasing sites that they link to, and adding them to link farms. If they did this cleverly, or you weren't on the ball, then a competitor could harm you by taking advantage of your outgoing links. However, if Google is penalizing sites just because of who links to them, and *there are no reciprocal links*, that is a different story.

[WebGuerrilla]

>>if you are going to accuse Google of being liars you should provide evidence.

I wouldn't say that I'm calling them liars. As startup has pointed out, they have left some solid wiggle room in their public statements on the matter.

What I will say is that I have seen specific examples, which have been confirmed by Google employees, where a site was dropped or penalized based solely on the actions of other sites.

For obvious reasons, I cannot go into any specifics, but everyone needs to understand that there are certain situations where this can happen.

[rfgdxm1]

I'll take your word. I have had doubts about Google myself in this regard. Obviously, Google ain't doing the best job is sites are being dropped or penalized based solely on the actions of other sites. That wiggle room there basically is Google covering their backsides about the possibility that occasionally they might drop the ball.

[startup]

rfgdxm1,
I changed nothing, the quote used is exaclty the way Google published it (http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html).

[rfgdxm1]

What I meant was that what jdMorgan posted before is also consistent with statements made by Google. Google has never made clear exactly what is what. If what Google really means to say by "almost nothing" is that a clever competitor can get you booted from Google, even though you do nothing wrong (including here by error or tricking you), then that basically means Google is incompetent, and malicious competitors can shaft the competition if they know how to exploit Google's inadequacies.

[Surprise355]

Will Google penalize a site for linking to sites on free servers?