using a redirect to mask a reciprocal link exchange?

[kidmercury]

suppose i own a site, Site A. i arrange a link exchange with the owner of Site B. when i link to him, i use a cgi redirect. when he links to me, he uses a straight up link -- no redirect. would search engines perceive this to be a non-reciprocated inbound link for me?

[fathom]

Google's general response to this would be... "don't be evil".

[kidmercury]

Google's general response to this would be... "don't be evil".

to which my response would be, make your algorithm work properly so that such "evil" behavior is not rewarded. by rewarding me for my evilness, aren't you enabling me to help make the world a horrendous, god forsaken place? wouldn't that make you evil as well?

i'm not concerned with moral attacks; they generally stem from individuals -- or in this case, corporations -- that are repressed. i'm concerned with the risk associated with my actions.

[fathom]

Well maybe I should have been a little more descriptive and a little less presumptive.

I assume you wish to exchange links so that you gain benefit and the reciprocating website gains nothing [search engine wise].

If your website has 'click value' e.g. an abundance of traffic leaving your website to theirs - well - I guess that's ok.

But if the reciprocating website owner gains no benefit - why would they link?

Thus must original statement - the intent appears to be base on deception and no longer a 'reciprcating exchange for mutual benefit'.

The best way to get 'one way links' pay for them, IMHO

I guess however, if all websites did the exact same thing for links to you - and ask for a static link in return - what would be your response?

[kidmercury]

I assume you wish to exchange links so that you gain benefit and the reciprocating website gains nothing [search engine wise].

yes, i get more search engine benefit if the link *appears* to be non-reciprocal.


If your website has 'click value' e.g. an abundance of traffic leaving your website to theirs - well - I guess that's ok.

if my site gets one way links (or links that appear to be one way), it'll rank high on search engines. so it'll have a lot of traffic. so it'll have a lot of click value for the people on my links page.

I guess however, if all websites did the exact same thing for links to you - and ask for a static link in return - what would be your response?

obviously i wouldnt do it, or would want something in exchange to "level the playing field," so to speak. but i'm counting on the fact that most people aren't going to be be aware of how i execute this strategy.

of course, before i actually do this, i want to gauge the risk level of me getting "caught" by the search engines, and how they would react. would they view this negatively? would they blacklist? discount the link value?

[fathom]

... but i'm counting on the fact that most people aren't going to be be aware of how i execute this strategy.

of course, before i actually do this, i want to gauge the risk level of me getting "caught" by the search engines, and how they would react. would they view this negatively? would they blacklist? discount the link value?

Well that 'would be that way to do it - or use a jump script.

From the search engine 'no problem' what-so-ever but this is still problematic.

While you will likely get many links in this way you can pretty much guarantee they will nearly all be of the lowest quality, as the aspect you are counting on 'are not aware' tends to mean they don't know anything 'at all about link exchange'... whereby quality isn't a factor either.

Everyone serious about link exchange and with moderate or higher quality will avoid you.

An inherent future risk is people will eventually learn the game, and all those low quality links will turn to 'no quality' or worse for you 'no link' - but you are still potentially sending them traffic.

[randfish]

km -

If I'm not mistaken, there are even trickier ways to do what you're talking about - hiding the link from search engines while making it look as 'real' & 'legit' as possible in the code. Sadly, sine I don't practice these techniques, I don't know what they are, but I think you can be much more dastardly than just a cgi-redirect.

As for your philosophy, I agree, although I'm not going to try it out personally. The search engines have the responsibility to pick up on dirty tricks, and we (collectively) have a responsibility to try to play dirty tricks. Otherwise, the SEs would never improve.

[Dave Hawley]

Don't you think the risks out-weigh the benefit.....a lot?

[kidmercury]

Don't you think the risks out-weigh the benefit.....a lot?

it depends. in this case, i'm not seeing how it's so risky, and i plan on creating multiple sites to help promote my service, so only one of the less important sites would be employing this strategy. the primary site that would sell the actual service would be white hat to the bone.

at least that's what i'm thinking at this point. i'm eager to hear from people who can dissuade me though.

[sebastian]

quite honestly, it doesn't seem risky at all. in this case the "no evil" crap is just that ...crap.

it's not evil to manage your "linking" in any way you choose. it's your site, and from a usability stand-point, which i think search engines care more about than 'proper' SEO, you aren't doing anything wrong.

you aren't appearing to link one place and sending them to another...

you aren't hiding links with CSS or {*gasp*} markup...

but you are kinda dissin' the link partner ...but hey - that's your perogative and business integrity. they'll probably call your bluff - but maybe not.

personally, i wouldn't do it, but i'm rather focused on business integrity; however, it's not a "black" technique nor will you get banned or penalized simply because you chose an alternative linking style.

if that's the case - double-click are some black-hat fools.

some people love google and its culture so much they refuse to see the forest for the trees. these "no evil" posts drive me as nuts as the whole white, black, gray hat thing. it's silly and only goes further in boosting google's ego in that we are all so very concerned about what they might do or think (whoever 'they' actually are...)

[fathom]

quite honestly, it doesn't seem risky at all. in this case the "no evil" crap is just that ...crap.

it's not evil to manage your "linking" in any way you choose. it's your site, and from a usability stand-point, which i think search engines care more about than 'proper' SEO, you aren't doing anything wrong.

you aren't appearing to link one place and sending them to another...

you aren't hiding links with CSS or {*gasp*} markup...

but you are kinda dissin' the link partner ...but hey - that's your perogative and business integrity. they'll probably call your bluff - but maybe not.

personally, i wouldn't do it, but i'm rather focused on business integrity; however, it's not a "black" technique nor will you get banned or penalized simply because you chose an alternative linking style.

if that's the case - double-click are some black-hat fools.

some people love google and its culture so much they refuse to see the forest for the trees. these "no evil" posts drive me as nuts as the whole white, black, gray hat thing. it's silly and only goes further in boosting google's ego in that we are all so very concerned about what they might do or think (whoever 'they' actually are...)

LOL :) in other words your points on dissin' and intregity basically says 'it ain't worth the risk' - which is what I said.

There are worse things to being banned or penalized by search engines e.g. a bad reputation for instance via some form of scam. Scam implies some form of dishonesty where the implied offering is knowingly not being delivered - and this is what we are talking about here.

Color it rosy pink and call it an alternative linking strategy if you like but it's still preying on the 'unaware' - correct?

That's a scam.

it depends. in this case, i'm not seeing how it's so risky, and i plan on creating multiple sites to help promote my service, so only one of the less important sites would be employing this strategy. the primary site that would sell the actual service would be white hat to the bone.

at least that's what i'm thinking at this point. i'm eager to hear from people who can dissuade me though.

sebastian is correct - this isn't 'black' anything - it's just bad business sense.

[kidmercury]

LOL :) in other words your points on dissin' and intregity basically says 'it ain't worth the risk' - which is what I said.



personally i think how much the "diss and integrity" stuff will harm you depends on what industry you're in. let's say in your in the online gambling industry. that's a very competitive industry with a lot of smart and skilled seo's in it. techniques like this are going to be very transparent and will not get you far.

now let's say you're in another industry that's completely different -- like astrology services. i cant say for sure but something tells me that astrology webmasters are not the kind of people that talk about temporal link analysis or algorithms for contextual relevancy while on their tea break. you could probably do a link exchange with them where you can write the code so that it is non-reciprocal in the eyes of hte search engine.

in the former scenario, the tricks will probably hurt more than help. in the latter, i would venture it helps more than hurts.

[fathom]

First it hurts you each and every time your clever arrangement is uncovered... you need to appreciate that you are communicating with people that communicate with others and others, and others and people talk.

It takes only '1' - and your demand is gone and if for example you have this 'only on one site'... do you think people will trust you at others?

But your risk is being adopted for no reason what-so-ever as there is nothing wrong with links out of your website - in fact they actually help.

People get tunnel vision when PageRank is put into the picture and I'll assume for the moment that it is 'PageRank leak' that is causing you to intrepret 'I need to keep it'.

By doing this so only 'one way links are achieve' you reduce the effectiveness of your strategy because the outgoing link anchor has value as well - but Google doesn't see this either.

Link anchors benefit the 'link-to page' this doesn't stop at a one link generation but affects all other pages that page being 'link-to' links to... and so on.

Eliminating this effect will prevent others from getting PageRank but will also prevent more relevancy to a topic & more weight to that page, which is relevancy & weight other pages - both of which is what you would have gotten more of in return.

[Dave Hawley]

Anyone that attempts to artificially manipulate PR and/or SERP position runs a risk from Google. Some are riskier than others, but they are all risky.

Google is judge, jury and executioner and answers to nobody in regards to who's in, who's out, or who's on page 1.

[sebastian]

UGGH. this is why i should simply bite my tongue when i read these kinds of topics.

again, if this guy wants to redirect his urls using CGI, more power to him. he's not wanting to apply anchor text appearing to go one place and then taking the user to another place ...he is simply not making the url visible to the crawlers.

nothing wrong with that. third-party ad servers do it as policy. i have many vendors where i have placed links, but the links are sent to their system and their system redirects to my site. they do this tracking purposes. personally, i hate that i don't get the benefit of link relevancy with some of these partners, but the human clicking aspect of it makes it a worthwhile deal.

this guys point has NOTHING to do with what google or any other engine thinks is correct. there is no deceipt. the only "gray" area (there's that word again) is the fact that if he makes a link deal with someone and does not adequately expose their URL for crawler exposure he is not holding up his end of the bargain.

that's all.

[kidmercury]

nothing wrong with that. third-party ad servers do it as policy. i have many vendors where i have placed links, but the links are sent to their system and their system redirects to my site. they do this tracking purposes. personally, i hate that i don't get the benefit of link relevancy with some of these partners, but the human clicking aspect of it makes it a worthwhile deal.

this guys point has NOTHING to do with what google or any other engine thinks is correct. there is no deceipt. the only "gray" area (there's that word again) is the fact that if he makes a link deal with someone and does not adequately expose their URL for crawler exposure he is not holding up his end of the bargain.

that's all.

perfect -- so i'm safe. thanks for the clear cut analysis, sebastian.

[kidmercury]

based on sebastian's answer i'm assuming the idea i suggested regarding using frames (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3444) would also be search engine friendly, and would allow you to minimize the outbound links on your page (due to the frame) while still getting a lot of inbound links to that page.

[fathom]

sebastian is 100% undisputed, absolutely correct... you are safe.

But it just won't work - to promote you.

Related http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3467

[kidmercury]

sebastian is 100% undisputed, absolutely correct... you are safe.

But it just won't work - to promote you.

Related http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3467

i guess what's really being debated is

1. does my site have sufficient value so that people will want a link from it so that they get human clicked traffic

2. do people have enough of an understanding of seo to understand what is going on

ironically the answer to #1 will more likely be yes if the answer to #2 is no.

#2 is my main concern, and i really think it depends on industry and the nature of whom you're targetting.

[fathom]

#2 is my main concern, and i really think it depends on industry and the nature of whom you're targetting.

Specific to this...

1. links to you of no value - likely 100% correct

2. links to you of some limited value - possibly correct

3. links to you of moderate value - likely incorrect

4. links to you of high value - likely 100% incorrect

Assuming you are doing all the requesting - your rate of exchange will be extremely low 'if you target websites base on their PageRank value'. [that's an assumption - but a good bet].

Assuming you are expecting people to be the requesting party - well most people that seek link exchanges are doing so because they have some understanding that the 'link' will help their website... it's reasonable to assume they learn this from some media that promotes SEO or website promotion strategies like webpronews, entireweb, etc...

It's also reasonable to assume they have read or will read about 'link exchange scams' - Javascript links, jumpscripts, meta noindex, nofollow, robots.txt excludes, cgi, etc. via newsletters, or participate in forums...

The bulk of most SEO forum memberships are 'non-SEOs' do-it-yourselfers and in every industry.

Even in the industry segment you noted are well known spammers, dedicated SEOs, and lots of do-it-yourselfers that know the same bag of tricks. these tend to be the top of the pile [just like any other industry].

No matter - have fun... and I would love to hear of your success story! ;)

[kidmercury]

Assuming you are doing all the requesting - your rate of exchange will be extremely low 'if you target websites base on their PageRank value'. [that's an assumption - but a good bet].



that's the thing: i wont be doing this with high pr sites, but rather with low pr sites. i want to amass a massive collection of low pr sites with inbound links only. for high pr sites -- or actually i dont care about pr, but rather sites that are big and are going to get me good human clicks and branding value -- i will gladly work out a nice deal. the kinds of sites i'll probably be targetting with my redirect/framed stuff will be small amateur sites.

but hopefully i will have a success story to share with everyone!

[fathom]

...or actually i dont care about pr, but rather sites that are big and are going to get me good human clicks and branding value -- i will gladly work out a nice deal. the kinds of sites i'll probably be targetting with my redirect/framed stuff will be small amateur sites.

Interesting comment... offer up something of value elsewhere - negates the 'no value' here! ;)

[Bianco4810]

Kid Mercury it is obvious you are a very smart person with lots of drive to learn and explore new things.

I must give you credit for your diligence.

For me though it is just said to see such a waste of a good thing!
It is very obvious you could help make the world a better place... why is it you are just trying to "screw it and others in the world".

Over 24000 people just died and you are wasting people's time with trying to find a way to cause more problems in the world than there already is.

I just really have a hard time understanding how people can live their lives in this way.

Fathom... your patience is admirable... but I am sure your valuable time and knowledge could be better used by others with questions that have more value than this.

I wish you both a very prosperous and happy new year

[kidmercury]

Kid Mercury it is obvious you are a very smart person with lots of drive to learn and explore new things.

I must give you credit for your diligence.

thanks! :)

For me though it is just said to see such a waste of a good thing!
It is very obvious you could help make the world a better place... why is it you are just trying to "screw it and others in the world".

Over 24000 people just died and you are wasting people's time with trying to find a way to cause more problems in the world than there already is.

I just really have a hard time understanding how people can live their lives in this way.



oh please, dont be silly. dont be fooled by my custom user title; while i am the self-proclaimed badass of SEW, i'm secretly a very nice person. (but dont tell anyone. it would blow my image :cool: )

i just believe morals cloud judgment. the one thing that everyone is interested in is the evolution of search engines: it is in the interest of search engine users (pretty much everyone on the internet) and businesses. i am simply participating in the evolutionary process, but trying to do so in a way that benefits me. here's a post where i go deeper into this topic. (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=28714&postcount=30)

Fathom... your patience is admirable... but I am sure your valuable time and knowledge could be better used by others with questions that have more value than this.

knowledge never hurt anyone; if anything, it does the opposite. it is better for people to know that such "evil" people like myself exist so that they know what is out there, the risks involved, what to stay away from, etc., right?

I wish you both a very prosperous and happy new year

same to you ;)

[fathom]

Fathom... your patience is admirable... but I am sure your valuable time and knowledge could be better used by others with questions that have more value than this.

Well thanks but my purpose isn't to force my views on anyone... it's more to invoke discussion so that people that view this thread, today, tomorrow, a month or year from now can make informed decisions about their own business.

Regardless of the merits [good or bad] doing anything to get ahead automatically means someone else - isn't... whether that is via a link strategy that manipulates the less informed or a link strategy focused on mutual exchange [which screws those not involved in the exchange], PPI or PPC [same thing].

Someone else 'will always get less' or 'pay more' to get the same amount - that's simply the nature of competitive business.

The moment that you 'rank' higher someone else must rank lower - regardless of whether this is through best practices or less desirable practices the resulting outcome for the displaced website - is less.

[Dave Hawley]

would search engines perceive this to be a non-reciprocated inbound link for me?As far as I can tell you are attempting to make a SE believe you have ONLY inbound links and no reciprocated ones when in reality you do. If I'm not mistaken, you are doing this to " distort search engine rankings" in your favour?

[clarkhaddock]

What if all of my link partners have my link on their site pointing back to site A. Then I have their links place on site B which has no link to site A, what then? Would the SE's/Google even know what I am doing? After all the whole point of link exchange programs(most peoples) is less about letting people see your link on their someones site and clicking it to come to his but it is more about link popularity with the SE. How many links are out there. I would think this system would work well and Google would not be able to tell what is going on.

[kidmercury]

What if all of my link partners have my link on their site pointing back to site A. Then I have their links place on site B which has no link to site A, what then? Would the SE's/Google even know what I am doing? After all the whole point of link exchange programs(most peoples) is less about letting people see your link on their someones site and clicking it to come to his but it is more about link popularity with the SE. How many links are out there. I would think this system would work well and Google would not be able to tell what is going on.

RC


check out black_knight's comments on this cre8asite thread. (http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=15982). based on what he says, which i think makes a lot of sense, i dont think this would work.

[clarkhaddock]

I think I see/understand what they were talking about. One thing that I would not do is have a link from site B to mine so i am still confused on how Google would know what I am doing. In the thread you talked about they has a triagle or sometimes even more points than that which were linked. My idea is to have a triangle but not have it completed/linked all the way around. In theory, the exchange sites are linked to site A and my site B is linked to them but site A and B are not linked. Can google still tell?

[kidmercury]

my guess is that would work -- although there are some things to keep in mind. (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1908&highlight=block) after much deliberation over this new year's holiday i'm starting to think the best way to get inbound links for both human clicks and search engines is through quality content. i think it really might be that simple.

[fathom]

my guess is that would work -- although there are some things to keep in mind. (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1908&highlight=block) after much deliberation over this new year's holiday i'm starting to think the best way to get inbound links for both human clicks and search engines is through quality content. i think it really might be that simple.

You need to consider that 'link pop' is but a single variable. PageRank in conjunction is something tangible that you can see and people will do most anything the gain it without truly associating that website owner naturally link to websites that complement themselves.

You don't find 'complement' in a bunch of smallish websites all you find is time management problems. Managing a single website effectively is a full time job - adding a second website to create 'link pop' deprecates the time you have to invest in your primary website.

To offset this - we get into the habit of 'shortcut' where anything that seems to recapture some value because we don't have enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done at '1' site, let alone 2. The short cut seems to do this 'but not enough' so we add a third website which creates more time management problems needing more shortcuts.

Now we got a real game, where our intregrity is expendable - doing things that we normally wouldn't do being 'the company that projects the highest customer service standards and everyone wants to work with'... if they only knew, eh?

Notwithstanding you do have the right idea and the difference between human clicks and search engines [search engines being the external references you need to produce to get more human clicks] is the same difference between B2C & B2B.

Link 'partners' is a loosely define term that often means "don't screw me but I may or may not screw you".

Where traditional B2B partners are collaborators: associates who works with others toward a common goal.

It's futile to have total control particularly in link strategies simply because you answer to no one... [or rather you believe you answer to no one] however, collaborative works have shared goals, share control, and shared accountability and one more thing 'shared workload'.

Now you don't need to shortcut, and rather than intregrity being expendable it's actually amplified.