Man I got up this morning, checked my email and was stunned by the title from Entireweb newsletter. The title of the email was "Are Reciprocal Links Dead?" I will paste the entire article here for you guys to read. Is this true, if it is, what are we supposed to do?: Are Reciprocal Links Dead? If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned. The latest 'Google Dance', nicknamed 'Jagger', has caused major concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine's listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening and see what we could learn. We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google's Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time of this writing. By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of Google's actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser's 'link:' command. G only reports some of the links to your site, not all. Here is what we have seen: Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking site. As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G's actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure. But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in G's archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of 'aging' process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no longer appeared 'relevant'. The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way. If your web sites have suffered from the latest 'dance', you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for your move down the list on the search engines. During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking. The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business. This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same. We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness. In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent. We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool's game we are sure to lose. Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings. It's something to think about.
Inbound links. That's the bottom line when it comes to serps. Reciprocal links might not be the best but they're better than nothing, imho.
I am really starting to get annoyed by the content of these e-mails. Usually I just ignore them.. but they have been publishing enough ignorant information recently to push people to take action against them. There is ZERO Evidence to support any of that. Much like the Google Bowling letter, it is completely irresponsible.
I got that email too...wud break the ole heart if thats the way its going, one-way links are a pain in the hole to get.
I believe that G will not shove away the inbound link ranking, it's a good system they have created and they've been successful with it so far.
I don't know if reciprocal links matter anymore or not, but one thing is for sure, and it is logical to assume that google would move in that direction; any way through which webmasters would be able to kind of "emulate popularity" (such is done with link exchanges sometimes even with sites not so related to the content) could sooner or later loose its value. It just reminds us that what stays is quality, content and generally providing something people would just like and appreciate so much that they'd link to it themselves, share the link to your site with others, talk about it and therefore naturally grow your popularity. That would sure be very tough on many, but anyone serious about their web sites is sooner or later going to find a place in hearts and minds of a good share of internet users and ride on it. Besides, aren't link exchanges annoying anyway? You have to hold a place somewhere on the site with all those links you might not really care that much about, just because you have to hold your end of the bargain (linkback). If link exchanges loose value, than we're at least going to get rid of those often irrelevant links. Thanks Daniel
I too got this letter and wondering whether this is true or not. Is anyone there affected by using reciprocal links ??
I think i got an idea to still do reciprocal links and not get hurt by google by this. If you have more then 1 site which most people prolly do, do this. If you have site A and site B and would like a link to site A and would like to exchange links with site C give site C a link from site B and ask them to link your site A, which probably benifits both of you because google won't see an exchange of links there, because google won't no you own both of those sites. Just an idea I had. Not sure if it would work or not though.
1. it's "probably", not "prolly" - you're better than that, mystic - aim higher 2. what you are describing is a version of three-way linking - it's unnecessary - despite the hysteria about this issue, reciprocal linking is not being discounted or penalized
ahha i know its not prolly and its probably i write like that online all the time just like i write u instead of you or ppl instead of people etc. I can write well but wut's the point its just a forum, but if it was an article or something or something of that sort or some content i post on my website then ofcourse i would watch what i write.
Despite what I wrote upthere (previous page), yes I do believe recoprocal links still very much matter and I'm continuing with building them normally myself, but the greatest value still lies in offering something that will make people link to you not out of an obligation (exchange), but because they just like your content that much. That said, it probably isn't impossible that reciprocal links stop matter some day.. It's just not that day yet. But quality and content will always matter, that's my point. Thanks Daniel