Major Link Network

Has anyone seen this?

[SlyOldDog]

Has anyone any opinion on the LinksToYou scheme?

I'm a bit surprised it still works. Anyone interested can download the software and join the scheme. They send you html pages of links for you to upload to your site and in exchange you receive thousands of incoming links from other users.

It seems to rely on the fact that Google cannot know who is a member and who is not. It's pretty obvious to me when I check backlinks on a site and I see hundreds of different sites linking in all with folders called /travel09 or /travel08 but I can see Google's problem spotting these sites automatically. The main URL has been wiped from the Google database, but the hundreds of thousands of members still have decent pagerank.

I nearly had a heart attack when one of our staff had joined the scheme and had uploaded the html files to our server. Needless to say the pages are gone now.

I think this scheme is BAD. Has anyone got an idea how the members' pages can be identified?

[lazyz]

I've seen it work for about one update period. It appears google lets you test the waters... Those "links to you" type sites seem to work really well for a moment, then the bot has time to visit all the links, builds a map, tag you as a link farm and your gone.

[SlyOldDog]

I wish! The site I found it on has been top for 2 years!

[Conard]

I've also noticed some sites flying inder the radar using this for a couple of years. The ones I noticed used the image link and not a text link to the pages.