Appended Link Attribution Scripts - Natural or Unnatural?

[londrum]

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/link_development/4435194.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 9:06 am on Apr 19, 2012 (utc -8)

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... another thing i do is add backlinks to any text that gets copied from my site. it works like the 'Tynt' script (ever heard of that?), except its my own script.
everytime someone copies something onto the clipboard, a backlink to the page it came from gets added to the end.

i thought that was a great way of getting backlinks too, but now i'm even getting nervy about that.

there's a lot of talk at the moment about backlinks being punished if they're not "natural"

...are these scripts still worth pursuing, given the possible penalty

[martinibuster]

That's a valid concern. Strictly speaking an editorially given link is defensible, where the link is freely given.

The question could be, is an appended link a suggestion to those sharing your content that they also share proper attribution? The link is easy to remove. So if people "choose" to keep the appended attribution link does that constitute an editorial decision?

[bakedjake]

The link with editorial content is completely justifiable - it's attribution. Google punishing that would be silly.

I think the editorial decision is already made the minute the new site uses the old site's content.

[londrum]

what is your opinion on using rotating keyword phrases?

i dont just link back with a plain URL, you see. i grab the title of the original page, and throw in some site specific keywords, and use that as link text.
so there might be about ten different keyword phrases for each page.

if google sees a load of links back to my page that only use ten different phrases, that is going to trigger some alarms, because it looks unnatural.

i think its dumb that google is making us worry about this stuff, because those links are all legit.
i might just link back with a plain URL, to be safe.

[martinibuster]

If the link attribution link is given as an editorial decision, but the anchor text is not chosen by the web publisher, is that really a freely given editorial link?