Forum Moderators: open
It did in fact increase it but at the same time got us banned from AV's index.
This is the reason I got from them after many e-mails back and forth.
"Your site had been blocked for having a page containing only links.
This page may result in misleading results"
Live and learn they say.
I've since removed linkstoyou pages from our server and the links to it on our pages but AV never really brought us much traffic anyways.
More & more search engines are starting to do this. Google, AV, and Inktomi have all been cracking down on people artificially boosting their link pop. Joining public programs like links2you is an easy way to get burned....
It's funny how they don't do away with the 90,000,000 other pages out there that do the same.
I'm surprised they have even replied to you these days.
I was surpized they got back to me as well. I was going to going to continue sending them e-mail after e-mail until they did anyways. So it was better for them that they did right away. :-)
Does anyone know why signatures aren't allowed here, like at spider-food.net/forum and siteownersforum.com and sitepoint?
Thanks,
Haig
Anyway, back on topic.
Ya, ink has also been aggressive about banning link programs, web rings, and FFA link farms.
It might be rooted in my love of the old fashioned personal homepages, where people set up links pages with special sites that they found interesting, or just plain fun. I kind of like selective, relevant linking.
I got an email the other morning from a client wanting me to add a certain web ring to her site. I replied that it's her site, so I would, but then I would remove all traces of links to me from her site because I wouldn't want to be found to be affiliated in any way.
Reason is that the webmaster in charge of all those sites uses all kinds of hidden text on their own and client sites, and it's only a matter of time til it catches up. Not one of those sites has a top 20 ranking that I've found, and even what they do have is because of all the inter-linking that's done between them. It won't last, and even so far it hasn't done any good. My client changed her mind by reply email and thanked me :)
It's only a matter of time before things get tighter and tighter on linking, I'm afraid. I'm still leery of too much of it, and I'm careful about who I'll exchange links with, even checking out the site code first.
There is no definite list (that's available to the public anyway). Your best best would be to stay away from anything that's available to everyone (or almost everyone), the only system that I would use, would be a proprietary sytem (and your still taking a risk).
