faking recip links

what a trick!

[needhelp]

I just found out that one of my competitors who recently started outranking me is doing something "strange". His links directory, you know - the one where he has promised to link back to you if you link to him - is almost completely filled with broken links.

Click on a link from one of his "resources" and you get a brief version of HIS homepage!

url something like: www.example.com/store/9757/page/www.theLinkThatShouldBeReciprocated.com/

So if a site doesn't bother to check if it's getting the promised recip link, then this guy's site basically gets away with a one-way link which is great for his ranking!

...or am I totally missing something here and I'm going to look really stupid when you all correct me...

[edited by: tedster at 4:39 am (utc) on July 6, 2007]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

That looks like a link that is supposed to go through a script (possibly for tracking purposes) but the script is broken. The fact that you see the Home Page -- possibly a custom error page? -- is what makes me think there a script error.

Whether the script is broken, or even if it really took the visitor to the other site, search engines today do not count this kind of scripted backlink.

[vincevincevince]

It may actually be your fault and not his... if you filled in a form which asked for your website URL, and you typed www.example.com and not http://www.example.com/ then your link will be seen as relative:

<a href="www.example.com">Link</a>

I doubt it is a dishonest attempt to get one-way links, I've seen those in the past and they've used:

User-agent based cloaking (Google doesn't see the links)

Javascript windows.status change to appear as a link, and javascript to do handle the onClick with an empty href=""

Links which 'disappear' a few weeks later

Links pages which rotate - you fall off the bottom of the page onto a poorly linked page as new links are added above you

[needhelp]

I'm actually not linking w/ this site. The broken script thing sounds right, except for the fact that a few of his links are not scripted and are simple direct links (http://www. format).

So my assumption is some webmasters complained and he fixed theirs specifically and they don't care the other links are "broken" because it makes the link page their link resides on look like there's only a handful of links on it, which is better for the "unbroken" links. Does that make sense...?

Why am I fantasizing about doing this myself... ;) 100s of one-way links would do me wonders! But, wait, that's dishonest!