Like many people I submit to regular directories and a number of article directors for articles so when I checked my baclinks I was suppressed to find many sites linked to mine that I have never heard of. How did this happen or what am I seeing? Are backlinks created without us knowing it.
Sure. Anyone can link to your site at anytime. I can't be sure without seeing the sites but some could be either screen scraping or pulling in RSS feeds for your article submissions. The later being most likely.
Weird thing that I have noticed to is that some of my backlinks are from machine generated sites. So if you are high in a certain keyword, some machine generated sites will have you listed in the results of their page that they then flank with ad words...
Yes. The best links are the ones you know nothing about! I found about 40 links from blogs that blogged about a product I sell (that happened to appear on HGTV). each of them linked to my site, which makes me #1 for it (even though its a very non competitive term).
aasdad.com/1031-exchange-experts/2006_06_25_archive.html this was one that I picked up off of yahoo for my site 1031store. Looks a little suspect to me, especially since I can't open the site... Don't get me wrong, would love the backlinks, but only now getting the site released, and 1031 exchange experts is one of the words that I rank more highly on... especially when you water it down a little with states entered too.
Yeah, this same domain has some listings in Feedster. They are just pumping out RSS feeds of your articles. No harm no foul since it helps you.
Hey Lorien.... yeah, I'm just down the street... I was in Brandon the other day playing golf... went to some really cool bar, wish I knew the name... then some Irish place for food. Brandon was pretty cool. Seemed like there was more action there than St. Pete. Searchnology, your right... no harm no foul... if that registers as a backlink... I'm alright with that. The more the merrier it seems. Clarifying what I said a little, probably only up to 3-4 of the links that I've seen at any one time are what I would think of as machine generated pages. If you are seeing great growth in your backlinks, Allwayslearning, it is more than likely a result of your continued promotion. BTW, what's your site Allwayslearning... how long did it take you to see a growth in links... to what extent... I'm going into the process myself.
Here's a better example of what I'm referring to Searchology http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=link:www.keepyourcapitalgains.com&FORM=MSNH http://www.mwbex.de/gains.html http://www.private-krankenversicherung-id.de/gains.html I was checking out the above site because the site owner had begun posted an article with her domain... I was trying to determine if it had registered as a link... Since I find that MSN seems to be the first to pick up new links... thought I'd go there... Of her backlinks, the 15 at MSN, 4 are to the same machine generated site... these other two are some of the examples... Nothing wrong with that... but that's what I had noticed reporting occasionally with backlinks... these ones generally go away after a little time.
Yeah, these sites have feed scripts. My site works in a similar fashion(but much cooler Check this link: http://www.searchnology.com/www-keepyourcapitalgains-com.html
Ahhh, ok, that's what you mean. Your site looks like you can develop some content... some of the others, I agree are pretty funny. That's right, nothing wrong if they help... not to mention, they are on a relevant page.
Thanks for so many great answers but what is screen scraping and how are they linking to my rss feeds and how did the ones with backlinks to my site before I started rss feeds get linked to my site. I would think this is all good but was just wondering how so many backlinks were created without me knowing it until I checked.?
If you have a good quality site that offers something then people will be interested in it and what it offers and are more likely to link to your site from theirs. Think of it this way. Do you think Google and Yahoo has manually gone to article directories and other web directories to submit their site's link to get a few million back links. No they have not, they have got all of that because they have quality sites that are popular and offer something valuable to the web.
Offering rss feeds might be the best way to get natural links for your site. If you offer good content, a lot of websites will be interested in your feeds.
I get a lot of back links to my sites from scapers, they grab my rss feeds for content stir in some ads sense etc. I just wish that google would quit banning them every 6 months or so my backlinks quit yoyo-ing
This just shows that your site has good content and is valuable. Well done as it doesnt happen very often!
I have some doamins in parking, and sometimes a bot comes searching for good content. These bots can be from google or from any other search site (known and unkonwn). Another thing that I have noticed is that when a bot comes to domain, it also comes to a related domains, i.e. all domains that begin with "newyork". If you have content instead of a parking, the bots add your site to their directory.