I have heard much debate over sitewide links, some saying they have been penalized by google, others saying it has had not negative effect. I wanted to hear from other people on this issue, since from my research i have no conclusive evidence that sitewide links are negative.

It appears to me that it might depend on where the sitewide is coming from, if you are getting sitewides from small sites, with less unique content, then possibly that is damaging, however rich unique content sites, from my research have had no negative effects, and in a addition i know many sites with sitewides which are in the top rankings of google and have been for some time.

I have three sitewide links from rich content sites and haven't been penalized by google as of yet, in fact i have seen progress in my rankings, however i'm still skeptical about buying more sitewides. I have one company offering me a different kind of sitewide link, they are offering up to 25 unique urls and keyword text sitewides, so basically linking to 25 different pages on my site. Will this counter any google penalizations?

Any input, advise, or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Until somebody smarter answers this question ( I have no clue.) can you tell me what a site-wide is ?

A site-wide link is where a site gives you a link from every page (or perhaps just *many* pages) on the site. As to whether or not this causes a penalty I wont comment but certainly at a minimum, the value of these links is discounted substantially.

IMO Gs' linkage penalisations work on the "last straw" principle, so you could have a number of RoS links with no ill-effect, feel confident, and the next one gets you pinged....

I have three sitewide links from rich content sites and haven't been penalized by google as of yet, in fact i have seen progress in my rankings, however i'm still skeptical about buying more sitewides.You're getting site-wides and you're buying them, which G probably counts as two strikes against you. :-)

The question is, Do you have enough good/natural/(insert your own term here) links to overcome these little things that G doesn't like much? If you have a great link reputation, you can probably get away with things like this -- but I like glengara's "last straw" idea, too. When will you reach that point? I think it depends on your overall link rep.

Good input glengara, I guess that was the answer i was looking for to perhaps stop me from purchasing another sitewide.

What about websites which offer sitewides with a # of different texts, and different inbound landing pages. Do you think this will be a solution?

And does anyone know a good place to get links without going through brokers, not interested in any brokers. I'm looking for news sites, brooker prices too high on authority links.

If a site has many categories, each of which has it's own subdomain of the main domain and the global navigation links to every one of the subdomains and the main domain would this be considered sitewide, though it is just a site navigation?

>What about websites which offer sitewides with a # of different texts, and different inbound landing pages

I would say that might be worse not better, because it takes away any doubt as to whether or not they were paid for ;-)

What about websites which offer sitewides with a # of different texts, and different inbound landing pages. Do you think this will be a solution?

This is supposed to be the workaround for the Google penalization for sitewide links. It is supposed that Google looks for sites that have inbound linking on the same term and penalizes them. Also, it is believed that when sites get 100s of links basically over night, that it throws up a red flag to Google since there is no way that "natural" link building happens that fast.

There are still people getting good rankings from sitewide links and I see many top ranking sites that have those sitewide paid links indexed by Google still. Then there are others who were penalized and are completley gone from the rankings.

It is hit or miss, but there are definitely industries that are targeted more like the SEO industry!

*This is supposed to be the workaround for the Google penalization for sitewide links.*

AFAIK it was more to do with avoiding the sandbox, don't think G penalises specifically for RoSs, but they're taken into account when evaluating a sites' linkage, IMO.

A lot of this discussion presupposes that the site receiving the site wide links is the one getting penalized. Could it be that the site giving the links would be the one more at risk, i.e., that google might take away that sites ability tp pass PR or anchor relevancy?

>This is supposed to be the workaround for the Google penalization for sitewide links. It is supposed that Google looks for sites that have inbound linking on the same term and penalizes them...

Are you suggesting that I could throw a bunch of site-wides at a competitor and damage their rankings?

Are you suggesting that I could throw a bunch of site-wides at a competitor and damage their rankings?

Yes, that has been around for a while, it is called "Google Bowling". Technically someone can knock their competition out by putting dozens of sitewides links pointing to their competitions site, and fairly quickly. Google is trying to counter this now, but this is a problem.

I think it is ridiculous for google to discount or try to penalize sitewide links in the first place, rather they should just give less value to links pointing from the same domain (which they do) but to penalize and potentially drop a site based on sitewides is ludicrous.

>Google Bowling

IMO this is just speculation. If this is in fact the case, it is more likely a bug and not a matter of policy. Google has stated through various channels that a competitor can't hurt you this way. If Google allowed this, look at what would happen.

I would be happy to help you to test this - as long as you agree to leave the links in place permanently I will PM you a test site ;-)

*Google has stated through various channels that a competitor can't hurt you this way.*

From what I've seen in the past, with sites already close to a linkage penalty the addition of ROS links can trigger it, in the cases I saw the links were self-orchestrated so there may have been other linkage clues to an "affiliation", but if not....

Yes, that has been around for a while, it is called "Google Bowling". Technically someone can knock their competition out by putting dozens of sitewides links pointing to their competitions site, and fairly quickly.I don't think "fairly quickly" is correct. It can happen, but again, none of this happens in a vacuum. If a site with a great link reputation (LinkRank is what I called it on my blog) suddenly gets a couple inbound sitewides from less-than-stellar sites, it's not gonna hurt them. (It's like fast food -- go have a Whopper once a month and it's no big deal. But have one every day and you're in trouble.) :)

I think it is ridiculous for google to discount or try to penalize sitewide links in the first place, rather they should just give less value to links pointing from the same domain (which they do) but to penalize and potentially drop a site based on sitewides is ludicrous.I agree, and I think it's quite possible that what we're talking about as a "penalty" is actually just a "we're not gonna give you credit for it." Have to be careful to distinguish between things that actually hurt a site vs. things that just don't help.

>what we're talking about as a "penalty" is actually just a "we're not gonna give you credit for it."

I think that's more like it, or at least more like how it will be once Google gets it fixed. If it's not already fixed, that is.

In reply to the last two comments about penalty vs not giving credit, there have been many cases were sites have actually dropped off from google, so that is what is meant by penalty. Sites which were one day top three, next never to be seen until removal of sitewides. If it were just a case of not receiving credit then there wouldn't be such an issue.

In the end, everything is speculation, and everyone has their own theories.

Sites which were one day top three, next never to be seen until removal of sitewides.Hold on a sec -- are we talking about removal of inbound sitewides from OTHER sites, or removal of outbound sitewides on the site in question? I thought we were talking about the former, no?

So ... Site A (the dropped site) contacted Site B (the one with the sitewides pointing to Site A) and told them to take down the sitewide links, and all of a sudden they're back in the index?

I'll take your word for it, but I'd have to guess there were other things going on. Either:

1) Site A is quite possibly involved in other less-than-ideal (i.e., unnatural) link patterns, too. If you're getting/buying sitewides, you're probably doing other stuff, too.

2) Site A didn't have a good enough overall link reputation to survive the unnatural sitewides. So this would be like the "last straw" idea that glengara mention (in this thread, I think).

But you're right, it's all speculation and theory. No argument there. :)

We have several sites that we have sitewide links from (partner sites). Our links , however, are in the from of banner ads. ONe of the sites is a very large site with thousands of pages. This particular site is driving quite a bity of traffic to our site through these banner ads, while the other sites really arent. Upon reading this thread, I have begun to worry that these sitewide links may be a problem. Obviously, banner ad links are not as good as text links for SEO purposes. What I am thinking of doing is wiping the sitewide banner ads off of the other smaller websites and replacing with text links with relevant anchor text on just a few pages. However, my concern is with the larger site. I am hesitant to make changes becuase we are getting traffic from the ads, however as I mentioned I am concerned about the SEO impact. Do you think it would be a wise move to leave this site alone for now or maybe just replace some of the banner ads with text links? What would be the smart move here?

Thanks

Well, few things to note.

1. If your site wide links through your banner ads aren't static then you have no worries there with the search engine and the chances are that they aren't.

2. Doing a site wide link with a smaller site can be just as damaging depending on many factors.

3. I believe the key with sitewide links is if you are going to get them then they must be from reputable sites. Sites of Authority, with much content, and related content would be best.