An Ethics Question

[Owlcroft]

Yesterday I did something that, after consideration, I still feel is ethically sound, but I am sufficiently unsure that I would like to see some opinions from others. It has to do with outgoing links.

What I did was comb my site and convert all outgoing links to being hidden via php, with the following exceptions: every site that I know of that links to me has a link back from me, on a single page of links; that page is identified to site visitors explicitly as sites that link to me, and contains a note that I list and link such sites not only out of reciprocal courtesy, but in the belief that of the welter of sites on my subject, sites that link to me are more than ordinarily likely to be of interest to visitors to my site (which most, though not all, are).

Besides that single page, I have another single page with a few favorable comments about the site taken from other sites, and each of those also has a return link, even though it duplicates a link on the other page.

As I say, all other links are now hidden. That includes a lot of junk I have no compunctions about, like links to Commission Junction and Amazon, but it also includes some sites of general interest to visitors but that do not have a link to me.

Am I being Scrooge by hiding the outlinks in that last category?

I try to treat Page Rank somewhat as I do actual money. When (and if) I have a good bit, I spread it around generously; when I'm short, I conserve what I have. Had I a nice, high PR, I'd be glad to bestow some mana on worthy sites; but when I'm a struggling niche player, I conserve what I can, save for the moral obligation to reciprocate.

Comments?

(Incidentally, that change appears to have moved me overnight from #64 under my keywords to #24.)

[compar]

(Incidentally, that change appears to have moved me overnight from #64 under my keywords to #24.)

I don't believe hiding links has anything to do with your placement in the SERPs. Just pure coincidence. You have to be careful about those cause and effect judgements.

This subject really goes back to the issue of "do you bleed PR by placing outgoing links". I think the answer is basically NO, with this caveat.

You do not give away part of your PR when you link out. But the PR that each page gets from you is your PR divided by the total number of links. (That's simplist but it is essentially the case.)

So that means your are passing slightly less PR to your internal pages and because they get less they have less to pass back to you. So if you dramatically increased the number of outgoing links from a page the result could be that your PR goes down. But not because you give PR away.

However I think the number of links would have to be significant before you will see any difference in PR. Also if you are using Javascript to hide these links it may not work for long. Google has announced that they are going to teach their bots to read and follow javascript links.

Now as to "ethics" I think that web design and SEO is amoral. It's got nothing to do with ethics. So do what you want with your links. But you just may be doing a lot of extra work for nothing.

[hans]

i never cared about a back link - if another page has a good service that really enjoyed or that really helps me then link to it - no matter if they have back link or NOT.

for myself i found that a FULL focus on more pages meeting the NEEDS of others creates more visitors and oveall increased traffic.

i have no idea of my PR - i run linux and have no time to play with such numbers. - rather on improving whatever can be improved including content, quality and design.

i also see from the webalizer access_log stats that there are many dozens of private pages / sites linking to me that never asked for any back link from meor informed me of their linking to me - anyone can link thats always fine and part of freedom in pubololishing. hence me too i get links IN just for the sake of love and fun or satisfaction from people who never care about getting a back link.

may be you may worry less about links, in or out, hiding and promoting, PR and so and - and just enjoy your peace and time to do your actual actual work you wanted to do ... - it may pay off much higher than the link / back link story may.

[GuyFromChicago]

i have no idea of my PR - i run linux and have no time to play with such numbers.

Your PR is 6 :D

[Foxy]

I agree Compar - the current thought is that PR has been downgraded in importance and that links are upgraded in importance themed or not, in or out.

So all that work Owlcroft is probably not needed.

I just recently placed a page of about 100 outward bound links on my ski site just linking to ski resorts, thats all, and one back to a ski resort page and one home and a site map to it. I will let you know what it does or not as the case may be.

[Owlcroft]

Well, the one hard, solid fact remains:

The site had been slowly sliding, and was down to #64, having never been higher than #31, and that only briefly.

The very day after I hid those links (and made no other material changes), I was #24--and have been for a couple of days now.

That order of change is, to borrow a phrase, a whale amongst minnows. We are not speaking of a shift from, say, #64 to #51: we are talking of a jump from #64 to #24 overnight.

What's the old saying? If it walks like a duck . . . .

[compar]

Well if I understand you correctly the change happened within 24 hours of you hiding the links. Is that correct?

If this is correct it is one shot in a million that they could be related. Google just doesn't update things like the number of links that fast. Did you make any other changes that would allow to see when the changed page was cached?

But even if Google had stumbled across the page and cached it in the first 24 hours after you hid the links it would still take longer than 24 hours for it to adjust all the relative link values.

And if anything Google should penalize you, not reward you for hidding links. As I think I said they are concerned enough about it that they have announced that they are teaching their bots to follow javascript links. So in my mind you are fantasizing.

[Mr T]

I agree with Compar, Google just doesnt update that quickly. Do you really think that Google deep crawled your site, indexed it all, updated backlinks and PR, and used them to update the SERPS, all in 24hrs? Ignoring the fact that they normally put new SERPs on www2 and www3 first for a while (I think?) I just cant see Google moving that quick.

[compar]

Way to go Mr T. We "grunts" have to stick together. :D

[Mr T]

Thats right :) I agree with the ethics thing as well, business really is not a place for ethics, you are out for number one, sometimes helping others might benefit you, sometimes it might not.

Eg, Shawn sure helps us all with his keyword tracker, but he sure benefits from advertising income too :)

[digitalpoint]

I thought I was... but with the new AdSense channels, I realized the income from the web tools (including keyword tracker) is enough to maybe buy a fast food meal per day. :) The bulk of the AdSense money comes from the "real" business side of the site...

- Shawn

[Mr T]

Which probably gets a lot of traffic and exposure due to you offering free keyword tracker? Probably similar kind of benefits as aspens method of using a free content site to promote a more commercial site I think..

[digitalpoint]

Yeah... the unreciprocated inbound links from the free tools has more value to me than the ad revenue for sure.

Also, there is something to be said about the user base visiting daily. Would have been much harder to jump start this forum without a pre-existing user base to draw from.

- Shawn

[Owlcroft]

I agree with Compar, Google just doesnt update that quickly. Do you really think that Google deep crawled your site, indexed it all, updated backlinks and PR, and used them to update the SERPS, all in 24hrs? Ignoring the fact that they normally put new SERPs on www2 and www3 first for a while (I think?) I just cant see Google moving that quick.

Yes, I really think so; and yes, I can indeed see them moving that fast. They have upgraded a lot of things, and speed of response is definitely one. I am very far from being an seo expert, but I browse here and there to see what people who are experts are saying, and such speed of response seems now to be an accepted fact of life.

I am trying another experiment. After a couple of days at #24, I slid to #31, presumably because the changed pages were no longer "fresh". So I am now, starting with tonight's overnight update run, adding some new material to each page (c. 1500-2000) daily; it's not exciting content, but it's real content and it's fresh daily. Let's see what happens, and how quickly.

Meanwhile, as no one has cried out "Off With His Head!", I deduce that the link hiding is not seen as despicable.

[compar]

I deduce that the link hiding is not seen as despicable.

I think Mr T and I both answered that question before. SEO is the simple use of tools and techniques. It isn't about ethics or morals or despicablity.

We have also told you that it won't make a damn bit of difference unless you had a ton of outgoing links.

You continue to argue that it was the sole reason for your boost in the rankings, but you haven't even confirmed whether or not Google had cached your new page within the 24 hour period in question.

The most elementary research in a situation like this where you think that something you have done might explain a change in ranking is to look at the cached copy of your site and find out if Google even knows about your changes.

[Mr T]

Good idea compar :)

Have just looked at Google cache of some of Owlcroft's pages, and only saw direct external links, no php redirects...

[Owlcroft]

The first one I looked at just now (greatsfandf.com/links.shtml), 14:30 Pacific Time, indeed has the php redirects in Google's cached version. Another one, from the large bulk (1307) of individual-book files, the ones that had the most "leaks", also shows a cached version with the redirects in place (greatsfandf.com/BOOKS/AboutTime.html). I did find, of 6 pages looked at total, 2 that did not yet have the latest version cached; but 4 out of 6 on a random sample (or maybe not so random--see below) seems sufficiently suggestive to me.

I have now taken to putting the date on those book pages (they are updated daily), so I'll be able to see, give or take hours, how fast Google picks them up. But clearly, they do move quickly.

Without going to the effort of checking Google's cache on each of over 1500 pages, this very limited sample was suggestive. Both of two sampled files from the top site level were updated versions; both of two samples from a large subdirectory (one level down) in which every file is rebuilt daily, almost always with changes, were updated; but neither of the two samples from another fairly large subdirectory, in which files are rebuilt daily but not usually changed in content by the rebuild had yet been updated. That suggests that Google might, in some manner, keep track of site subdirectories in which change (and not just of filedate) is frequent, and visit them more often.

[Owlcroft]

Another "Duh" moment: why didn't I just think to look up Google's cache of my site-change log page?

As of about 3 p.m. today, the 23rd, the cached version shows a last-change date of the 21st, a change made late in the evening of the 21st. So, at least for that particular page (which can scarcely have much PR), at the very worst case--assuming the cache was updated seconds before I hit it--Google had it within not over 40 hours. But I'd bet it was rather less. They do not yet have the change made late-evening of the 22nd; I'll try to keep track of when that shows up.

[Owlcroft]

Hmmm . . . . Now it gets interesting.

After several times showing me a particular cached page dated 21 March, Google has now begun showing me a 12 March version of that page--a step backward. How does that happen? When I want the Wayback Machine, I'll go there; when I want a look at Google's cached version of a page, I expect the latest version they have.

(I got that from a bookmarked link, but I went on back to the beginning looking it up and got the same thing.)

[Mr T]

Why dont you look in your logs to see how many pages Google has spidered and when?

[Owlcroft]

Because I am a naif. Till quite recently, all this was esoterica to me, and much still is. There are, I gather, software packages that will do log analysis, but I have none. My very few experiences with raw logs is that they are a colossal pain in the ass to comprehend.

I reckon that for folk at my level, the end result ought to be sufficiently demonstrative. I still am in a tizzy over Google's cache of my log page reverting back 9 days for no reason I can detect.

[Foxy]

I still am in a tizzy over Google's cache of my log page reverting back 9 days for no reason I can detect.

I think you will find this happening quite a lot with Google at the moment - it really does not know where it is at as it tries to implement changes. It has most probably just reverted its data back to the "one before" because of .... I don't know but you may find the position that matches in the 56 databases and do a comparison

You should check the 64 databases [listed as new] on mcdar http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php for your NEW positions that will apply most likely in the future ;)

[compar]

Remember also that Google has lots of servers and thay are not always in complete sync.

It is for all these reason that Mr T and I so strongly doubt that the change you saw in 24 hours was the direct result of hiding a few links.

BTW how many links did you hide?

[Owlcroft]

. . . Mr T and I so strongly doubt that the change you saw in 24 hours was the direct result of hiding a few links.

My log page is now cached by Google at a version that is at most 24 hours old. Since that is a minor page of my site, and my site is, shall we say, not MSNBC, I think we can take it as proven that Google catches changed pages fast these days.

And what they catch, they must surely take into account:: it would be literally indcredible to say they slurp and cache pages without taking the contents, including linkage, into their ongoing system accounting.

They do not seem, from a trifling sample, to have yet caught the 6812 new mod_rewrite "pages" on the site, and it will be interesting to see what happens when they do (over the next day or two, I guess).

[H]ow many links did you hide?

Assuming my count today hasn't changed from a few days ago: 1780. Not, I would say, trivial in number.

For perspective--the site's numbers as of the moment I am typing:

Actual (physical file exists) pages: 1529
Additional virtual (php) pages: 6812
Apparent site pages: 8341

[compar]

Assuming my count today hasn't changed from a few days ago: 1780. Not, I would say, trivial in number.

Rankings are done by the page not by the site. I do not think you removed 1780 links from any one page.

And while Google does indeed seem to be caching pages very quickly, given the delay in the last link count upgrade and the associated PR ranks I doubt very much that they will totally rerank a page or a site taking all apparent links into account in 24 hours.

Try unhiding your links for 24 hours and see if it makes any difference.

[Owlcroft]

Maybe in a week or so, after the effect of the new php pseudo-pages has been seen and stablized.

I had a typo in the hastily made count-checkscript: I hid 1810 links. And no, of course, they were not on one page (though one page had many); but it is my opinion, and that's all I claim for it, that Google gives a certain amount of significance to a site as a whole, and that that determination has some impact on that site's individual pages' serps, and also that individual pages' PRs have some effect on the site's front page.

Only your Google know for sure . . . .