In the last year or two, the English speaking web world seems to have been hit by a massive tsunami of PageRank obsessed India driven link scams, link spam requests, and I'm sick and tired of dealing with it. Here is what all these folks try and do. They build a couple of crappy websites with real content, get some PageRank built up, and then distribute that PageRank across hundreds of junk throw away websites. Once they have achieved that, they hit the forums in mass, and start blasting out the spam email requests looking for gullible webmasters. Once they catch your attention, notice how they always want you to link to real websites [their clients sites of course], while they insist on linking back to you with zero content crap websites, with the justification that they have some decent PageRank. Most of these people are gathering links for people who payed them to do so, and they are scamming all parties involved. Now I've played around with these shady people enough to know that around the 2 to 3 month marker, their link back to you will always disappear, usually with the entire website, as they lay the foundation for the next round of scams. So be warned, as it seems 70% of the people asking for links exchanges here, are nothing but these Indian scammers [who like to call themselves "John Smith, Mary Jones, etc"]. It's a real shame, because finding honest people to link with used to not be all that hard, but thanks to the tsunami of scammers from India, many honest webmasters have given up on navigating through the sludge all to together, and are impossible to find now.
I suspected this sort of thing. It's good of you to warn people. They use the same kind of game that you see on a late night infomercial: It's easy, it's cheap, and you'll make money doing almost no work! If it sounds to good to be true....once again, it usually is.
Yep. I have received my fair share of 3-way linking schemes that are set up this way. They just keep coming and coming in waves. Words to live by. And something you can smell a mile away too. I have gotten to the point, if the email or web copy has one mispelled word or the grammar is just a little bit off ... I am out of there. It always baffles me how anyone could be taken serious when they advertise SEO as 'professionally search engines optimizations packages started at lowly priced'.
I've had the same problem. I pretty much ignore any three way link exchange requests now. Some of them even have the nerve to offer the link back from a crappy PR0 website. Link exchanging is dying thanks to the flood of lousy requests. With the poor quality requests I get, I spend less and less time examining each one.
It seems you signed up to this forum only for this thread Also how do you know they are Indians? And its your duty to look for quality website and do link exchange only with them, thats it.
lolz...too bad none of thm PMd me...(may b 'cause am an indian too)...whtever, i cud never get ma site with good pr... droped to pr2 this pr update...lolz...but well @JSchwartz, i have to stand with ya, link exchange is kinda based on trust and it really is hard to find ppl to exchange links... well pal...ur right too
I know what your talking about. Many link exchanges on this forum are a waste of time. Don't just judge the quality of the link based on pagerank.
So true, you speak words of wisdom. Its sad that the internet is being saturated with scams, especially ones that effect an entire community but come from just one group of people
I don't think it is fair to single out one group for this type of linking scheme. That is just too easy to lay the blame at their doorstep. And if it was not for the Great Firewall of China, then there would be seven times as many scams going on and all of our email boxes would be pushing the limits. And there is no taming me either.
true. I'm from india too but i'd still second that. even i am scammed a few times by indians on this forum! lol , lack of brotherhood .
I should have mentioned I'm not bashing India or Indians. It's just in my own personal experience the problem seems to be predominantly coming from India. It's easy to find out where someone is from via DomainTools.com. Anyways, honest English speaking webmasters from India will get hurt by this the worst, which is really sad.
i am not an indian but pinpointing them as the scammers is unfair too. let's face it. there are countless scammers out there, indians, americans, europeans, asians. scamming crosses all geographical boundaries.
Again, this comment doesnt make sense honest english speaking indians? what does that mean? I agree that there is a hella of a spam around the webmaster community including some of the "great (lol)" internet marketers spamming you with crap copies of their ebook and in turn make u sell something Lets face it, u r a webmaster and u ought to get this crap. Leave it and move on. If i have to open a thread about every single scam/crap that hits my mailbox, i would create 100 forum posts each day. Its not just indians, this is a global phenomenon. Remember, behind every great fortune there is crime.
i agree with you godmode. some of the well-known internet marketing gurus out there are the crappiest authors. they usually rehash materials and sell them for $97. i believe these are the real scammers victimizing newbies and giving no value for your money. but again, scammers cross nationalities (asians, americans, etc.)
I think you are right and Google do not like link exchanges. yes you can try three way link exchange but you have to be careful in doing three way link exchange. But finally one has to keep eyes and ears open.
I am an indian and i have been recently scammed by one of the fellow members at DP. He happily exchanged links with one of my jobsite. A few days later i went to check at hi5arena.com and the link is nowhere to be seen. After sending him a PM, he replied saying ' I am working on something so i had to remove the link, and will put it back in sometime'. This was 7 days ago and link is still nowhere to be seen. So i agree, there are scammers! Also beware from people who are offering directory submissions and bookmarking services. Those idiots are just using submitterbot.com . It's a shame! nirav
It takes a blind idiot not to notice a massive amount of linkspamming 'devious' Indians on the loose. One could wonder why they have a market in the West, why they lack self-respect and don't get an education.
It happens every where since the population of india is larger than any country and ofcourse net user SEO eng ..... so you might get the IP from INDIA ..