Marcia
07-19-2004, 10:53 PM
I was checking backlinks for one of my sites at Yahoo and this showed up in the search results (specifics made generic)
Big, Small, Plain and Fancy Widgets
from Widget Farms
We grow the best widgets,
www.example.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=999
- 17k - Cached
That link goes to Widget Farms via a redirection script - example.com does not link to my site at all. It's "Widget Farms" that links to me, which also shows up in backlinks.
So the link from example.com is showing as a backlink to me, with the description and page title from Widget Farms. The way I figure it, just in this one case alone I'm being given credit for two backlinks according to Yahoo's tally, when there's really only one. Add that to the fact that the same thing is happening to every site with a link on Widget Farms' page, and that it's also happening with every other site being linked to with jump.cgi from example.com and it sounds like there could be a little bit of a mess.
How much of a mess this could turn out to be, if it actually is one, might depend on how much link popularity counts for scoring with Yahoo.
I was almost hesitant to post this publicly. It even put some ideas in my head, and I'm a White Hat. ;)
Big, Small, Plain and Fancy Widgets
from Widget Farms
We grow the best widgets,
www.example.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=999
- 17k - Cached
That link goes to Widget Farms via a redirection script - example.com does not link to my site at all. It's "Widget Farms" that links to me, which also shows up in backlinks.
So the link from example.com is showing as a backlink to me, with the description and page title from Widget Farms. The way I figure it, just in this one case alone I'm being given credit for two backlinks according to Yahoo's tally, when there's really only one. Add that to the fact that the same thing is happening to every site with a link on Widget Farms' page, and that it's also happening with every other site being linked to with jump.cgi from example.com and it sounds like there could be a little bit of a mess.
How much of a mess this could turn out to be, if it actually is one, might depend on how much link popularity counts for scoring with Yahoo.
I was almost hesitant to post this publicly. It even put some ideas in my head, and I'm a White Hat. ;)