Reasons You Will Delete a Link Exchange Request Hands Down...

What makes you promptly delete an email?

[Teshka]

Ever get link exchange requests that are more like lectures? What lines will make you delete a request in annoyance without even reading it through?

Here are a few of mine....

We would appreciate if you could adhere to certain guidelines before we become link partners:(Uhm, no)

Let me tell you something about search engine optimization...(I know something about it; that's why my site is higher ranked than yours, and you're asking me for a link)

If you want to exhange links with us, click this, go here, and fill out this to make a request(Are you kidding--aren't you making a request from me?)

Amy email that goes on more than 2 paragraphs.

Sound familiar? I don't know about the rest of you, but I've only got so much time in the day (and I don't want to waste it reading letters from strangers), so my advice is to keep it short and sweet if you want a link. Oh, and atleast pretend you've gone to the front page of my site by mentioning the topic somewhere in the email...

[Powdork]

GranPops,
Did you (or your spider) check to see if the link had been moved to another page?
Did you check for frames. Many people use full page framsets to show a particular PR on the toolbar while the actual frame the link is in is not in G's index.
How are you checking to see if the pages are indexed by Google?

[GranPops]

"I see the word "we" so does that mean orginally you had a helper or helpers look for these links?"

For we, read I

"Why didn't you make an attempt to contact these SOBs and tell them you can't find your link on their site anymore before deleting the links back to them?"

Tried that last month with 40 or so, and did not get a single reply.

Now they only get one chance to be an idiot.

[GranPops]

The spider checks the whole site not just the original link page.

Using "www.mysite.com" is sufficient to start the process.

If a site has 350 links visible but only 40 are recognised by G, someone is playing games.

[Powdork]

If a site has 350 links visible but only 40 are recognised by G, someone is playing games.

But lately, G is the one playing the games.

[GranPops]

One accepts variations in the algo, but even the genius engineers at G cannot be expected to find the 353 links that have been removed by a mentally disturbed webmaster.

[Powdork]

My point is you can not tell what links Google is counting by using the link command, by seeing if the page the link is on is indexed, or any of the traditional methods. In fact, if it does show up as a backlink on Google, you still don't know if there is any PR being passed, or if Google is giving you any credit for the backlink.
Sure, the people that trade links and then remove them to horde PR or make their link pages seem more attractive to repeat the cycle again are aspnoles, but such is the business of trading links for PR.

[Webdetective]

Could I get some of your opinions on this? I received a bunch of these emails.

Hello Webmaster!

It has been 72 hours since we informed you that the Webmaster at "www.******" would like you to participate in their link exchange program.

Please add the following html source code to your site and click on

[*******.php?q=*****...] to remain listed at [*******...] within 48 hours.

This is not a link farm or banner farm. Your link can be validated at anytime by checking the url above.

<!-- END HTML CODE -->
If you do not wish to participate in this programme click - [www*****...]

Regards

Webmaster

When I tried a Google search for their domain: link:http://www.****** it was showing 702 backlinks, yet the homepage is only PR 4. It ought to be 8 with that kind of link popularity. This makes no sense. I was able to attain PR 5 with just 13 backlinks for 1 of my sites.

I was asking because this webmaster wants to exchange links most of my sites. The links page where my link is listed is only PR 1, and many of my links pages are PR 4.
Fred

[sit2510]

>>> 1. 353 have removed the link that was previously there, and indexed by G.

GranPops - 353 out of 1000 is A LOT! That's 35% who remove your link. While some may actually remove your link, I guess most of them just move your link to another page. Just pure guess...

[GranPops]

Just pure guess......

Absolutely right.

Our spider checks the site not the page on which a link was placed.

[sit2510]

>>> Our spider checks the site not the page on which a link was placed.

Have you checked some samples manually?

You see I would not rely on automatic tool or spider thoroughly regarding this issue. I use Arelis to manage and verify my links. In some occasions, it gives false alarms that my links are not found on certain link pages, but when check manually, the reported missing links are ok. With manual check on those alert, I have avoided many times to delete good link partners.

So just a feeling that 35% is a bit too high and I will give weight on some spider's bug too.

[GranPops]

"Have you checked some samples manually ?

Of course, all of them.

[pmkpmk]

Please allow me to try to give a new twist to this thread:

Is there any way I can check how my OUTBOUND links are frequented?

Mybe I'm naive, but if I do a link-exchange I hope that BOTH parties benefit from it. It's of course easy to check the referrers of inbound links, so I see what traffic I get from THEM.
But can I - on my end - also see what traffic I am SENDING to them?

I've seen that a few big guys like HP use "Farewell" pages, which say something like "You are now leaving the democratic sector of our corporate website and go to the jungle of the web. Take care and have fun".

Setting up (in an automated way) an individual page for each outbound link will give me the statistic tools to monitor traffic flow, but I'm well aware that this is probably NOT what the exchange-partner had in mind.

Or is it?

[pmkpmk]

OK, no thread hijacking then... :-)

[rytis]

Checking for dishonest webmasters : I think it's pretty simple.

If you exchange links for SEs, use software. I.e. if your spider can validate the link, googlebot will likely too.

If you exchange links for visitors, come as a visitor and try to get to your site from some of their pages.

If you exchange links for both SEs and traffic, do both automatic and manual checks.

Sorry for bit offtopic.

R

[hunderdown]

Here's a case where I WISH that I had promptly deleted an email:

I got an email from what seemed to be a new directory site, telling me that they wanted to add my site, and would I help them place it in the correct category, etc.

Only AFTER I had gone through a few pages of forms did I learn that a reciprocal link was required....

Talk about deceptive!

[akogo]

hunderdown

What was the subject line of the email sent?

[Powdork]

Here's part of one I got this morning.

"Reciprocal links is becoming a major factor in search engine optimization strategies. More and more search engines are interested in the number and quality of links pointing to your site. - Webmasterworld Quote"

It didn't get the quick delete, but it didn't earn a link either.