Using the new rel="nofollow" attribute

;-)

The guy was heavily crosslinking, according to my "theory", G takes a fairly benevolent view on one links scheme, less so when there are a number in play.

I don't see the COOP as anything more than another "potential" links scheme.

 

excellent points Owl. I certainly agree that the network should evolve to the point where there are no bad sites listing ads - but I also feel that that is an unrealistic goal. Now if one of the search engines put out a "bad sites" listing, or even if there was a third party data source that could be queried it would go a long ways towards making that happen.

In my mind the responsibility for creating an automated "bad site" algorithm should not sit with the co-op network. Certainly the search engines would benefit and it would make financial sense, but in the days of "my database is bigger than yours" I don't see that happening anytime soon. Child filtering companies already have such data sources in place but they really are targetting a different kind of filter - child friendly versus "bad neighborhood".

There is a lot of speculation about what is and what is not a bad neighborhood in the SEO community, and therefore a lot of question about whether or not certain parameters should go into the algorithm. It's a very difficult question.

Time is the real factor here. As the major SE's provide solutions, or make ones which can be at least emulated, then the network can evolve. Blog spamming was a problem 12 months ago, and this "norel" attribute just came about - which even if it is a three year old issue, it is miraculous that MSN, Google, and Yahoo can agree on anything (Movable Type says that all three have agreed to support the norel attribute).

Should advertising sites be vetted? I want to say yes, but I can think of so many problems with that I just think it's more realistic to hold off on that idea. As it stands right now - it is my understanding that a link TO your site can't hurt it. That makes sense because if that was the case, I would be able to put up a bunch of bad sites, link them to my competitors, and drop their rankings.

Monitoring the sites that ad's point to is definitely a better way of doing things. I can't say that doing both is a bad idea, it's just one that is difficult and complex to implement. One possibility would be to filter out the sites that are advertising for you. If you saw a backlink that you really didn't like, you could say "don't let this site display my ads". This would also be problematic in implementation because it would more than likely provoke a redesign of the back end workflow and probably increase the traffic and CPU usage on the network servers.

Not trying to knock down any ideas, because all ideas are good ones. And I think the more meaningful discussion that happens regarding enhancements to the network the better. I wish I could offer up an idea myself, but I looked in my brain and I got nothing going on up there .

 

nevetS, perhaps I did not understand your post and need to re-read it, but the main concern, IMO, should be what ads are being published on your site(s)/page(s) pointing outward, not what other sites/pages are linking to you.

According to my understanding of things, Google (et. al.?) expect a publisher to be responsible for the content they publish. Ergo, if you link to a bad neighborhood (which I understand to be a site/page that is being penalized/banned), you may get penalized/banned yourself.

So the issue is really, IMO, are you comfortable that all potential links published on your site are not pointing to a bad neighborhood? As you mentioned, there is a problem with vetting as it would require a continuous monitoring situation as sites/pages could possibly change over time from "good" to "bad".

 

Why does everyone worry about this, how would it be possible for Google to know that the 5 links at the bottom of my page belong to a CoOp?

 

Grant, They don't care. All this worry about the coop is so over the top. Don't sweat it GG.

 

That's just plain silly. Then every news site or blog that points out a bad site would itself become bad in the eyes of Google. All you're doing is perpetuating the "fear" that linking to "bad neighborhood" sites is going to have a negative effect on your own site. Maybe if you have dozens of links on every page to casino, porn and ffa sites. But that's not what we have in the coop. Not even close. Please quite peddling your fear mongering unless you have unequivocal proof to substantiate your claims.

 

I'm peddling fear mongering? That's news to me. Please review my earlier contributions to this thread. I have not made any value judgement on the coop, but I do believe that there are risks inherent in the structure even if they have not been realized yet.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Forums are littered with webmasters who have experienced this. I'm not going to go digging them all up for you. If unequivocal proof is the new standard for posting on SEO forums, there is not going to be much for anyone to post about.

 

I think the fear mongering / FUD / namecalling all was happening by people who have 1-5 posts to their credit.

The thread started out as something along the lines of "if you don't put the rel=nofollow tag in the network, you are just a bunch of spammers", and along that line I feel that that idea was proved to have no foundation.

More recently in the thread, a few of us began discussing the fact that the network has room for improvement, but we were really just shooting ideas back and forth rather than saying anything bad about the network.

There certainly lies the opportunity for abuse of the network in it's current state, but as was pointed out, there are plenty of things in place to minimize that opportunity. The fact that all ad's are human-reviewed goes a long way to that end. I'm very comfortable with all sites that I'm currently linking to. I haven't clicked on everything, but I have clicked on quite a few and it looks to me like everything is above board.

My last comment was just a response to Owl's earlier comment, and it goes in an entirely different direction than the rest of the thread so for that I apologize for any confusion.

 

Could the nofollow announcement from google be any more clear?

If google reccomended directly using nofollow in the ad network would that make a difference?

 

I don't know why I can't help replying to people with less than 10 posts to their credit that insist on spreading FUD. You guys are worse than SCO.

Responding just to this quote specifically (no need to rehash old topics... just read through the thread if you have to).
Part 1:
Users are not adding links by themselves. The links are added by the co-op network, which we all implicitly trust to not add any bad neighborhood links. Bad links have gotten through, and DP has an excellent track record of removing links quickly which violate existing standards. Links that violate some non-existing standard when reported are discussed and I personally feel that anything that is out of line would get booted if there was any real clarity as to why it was bad. Digital Point is VERY responsive. More responsive than anybody could expect even for a paid solution.

Part 2: Is the ad network a blog, a referrer list, a guestbook? No. In all of those situations it is very easy for Joe Porno to come list his website on yours. In the ad network ads are human reviewed prior to release and meet a set of guidelines both for the ads and for who they point to. We all agree to place ads that meet those guidelines on our site. If I were to be writing a piece of software like that, I would put that change in place - assuming that it wasn't in conflict with another part of the design that would cause me headaches.

The only reason that other ad networks like Google's, Overture's, and the hundreds or thousands of other networks do not link directly is because they have to track ad statistics. There is no reason for that in this network since there is no payment for ads. If we were to direct all of our clicks through digital point it would not only be pointless, it would also put a much heavier load on their servers. Adding the rel=nofollow attribute does not make sense because the recommendation for usage points out that it is not intended for usage on the network. To that end, why don't we put five more tags on there? How about "title" or "alt" or maybe wrap it in span tags or div tags? Because it isn't necessary and it provides little to no benefit.

But hey, thanks for bringing me back on topic.

 

bernard

I actually have never seen this happen to anyone, I had another thread looking for people who it did happen to so I could figure out what they had in common.

its kind of weird people must be too ashamed to admit it

 

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3279

That one's on short notice. Be sure to read through page 2 where GoogleGuy states:

YMMV.

 

yeah i have seen that one post

did you notice that the site that used to have the hidden .css has a pr 6 and like thousands of backlinks

 

ferret77, many times people see what they choose to see. Perhaps you are not reading the same forums that I do.

FWIW, PR <> ranking on SERPs.

 

That is possible, I see what profits me the most

I am very skeptical of SEOs and coporate messengers, sometimes they may not have my best interests in the fore front.

Just curious but did you research of any of that stuff in the thread or did you just believe it at face value, where any of the other sites that linked to the phermone site penalized also?

Do you think it was the pr6 phermone site or the pr 0 one or the pr4 better orgasms site (which still has the hidden css up)

why do you think google doesn't take PR away from bad neighborhoods?

 

I have no reason to believe that the members posting to that thread were attempting to mislead anyone. You are welcome to link to all those sites yourself (selectively or collectively) and see what happens.

 

*why do you think google doesn't take PR away from bad neighborhoods?*

That's an interesting question, to which I have no answer.

That they do show "normal" PR for sites that are in fact barred from passing any, I have little doubt.

 

you should really research stuff glengara instead of just guessing

http://www.google.com/search?source...D:en&q=link:http://www.herbal-smoke-shack.net

The links from better orgasms site shows up as backlinks

so you apparently can get backlinks from bad neighborhoods

how the hell do you identify them?

ecspecially if you don't know css?

 

I couldn't agree more. This "bad neighborhood" thing has become an unjustified collective paranoia on many seo forums.