I actually think MSN is the best INDEXING search engine. The problem is that (right now) MUCH less people use MSN. They are still fairly new and longhorn and AdCenter will help them in time. Google seems to have the best results and are at least making an effort to weather the storm of Yahoo and MSN by coming out with new services but it seems Google (and maybe Yahoo now) is in a predicament. They need to walk a fine line between there desire for FRESH relevant content and fighting spammers who they feel are manipulating their algorithm. It seems both companies seem to have some false positives. Legitimate sites that get caught in the algo web while spammy sites somehow fly under the radar screen. This seems to be more prevelant with Yahoo. It APPEARS that Yahoo is taking a WAY more agressive approach. Someone over there determined that if you get a TON of links very quickly you MUST be a spammer. (by the way, in their eyes you can have relevant content and STILL be a spammer.) When Yahoo finds these sites, they seem to place an extremely HARSH penality on them and in many cases ban them completely. I think it may be more of a probation period but we don't know how long that will last. Google on the other hand doesn't seem to penalize getting a lot of links very quickly. I think they realize that there are many cases where sites could legitimately acquire a lot of links. Plus the Google team has always been more philosophical. They have been on a crusade for a decade to attempt to judge and rank sites democratically. Thus, I don't think they will punish you for something you can't control like who links to you. BUT what they do instead is place a dampening effect on all of those links. So you may get a ton of links but they may start out as 10% (for example) of the value that a long standing link might be worth. Google tends to only penalize you for things you can control like who you link to, hidden text, over optimization, duplicate content, etc. It really is amazing how complex this SEO industry has gotten in the last 2 years. The wisest long term strategy is to build your sites slowly and more naturally thereby optimizing more for Google. They are the lowest common denominator so in time you would do well in all 3 search engines. However, that approach usually takes so long that people can't make enough money, quick enough for a decent ROI. One thing we know for sure. In the next year, there will be many more changes. I am rooting for Google though I think they are getting away from their strategic focus. Google Maps is a good idea but may take years to come to fruition. Google Wallet .... well, who knows what they are thinking taking on PayPal/Ebay, the #1 payment processor in the world. Their profits could have an initial boost if they cater to the porn industry as PayPal doesn't accept them. But is Google willing to put up with the PR backlash? Really, I'm wondering how the co-op can evolve in time as the search landscape changes. I'm not saying we need to overhaul the system right now, but I'm just wondering if Shawn has some ideas floating around in his mind when the time comes. Certainly as Yahoo and MSN increase marketshare, would there ever be a point where weight was calculated on a sliding scale average of the big 3 engines? Is there any way to create a sister co-op for permanent links? In fact a long time ago I though it would be cool if someone built a super link exchange. There are two major problems with traditional Link Exchanges. 1) They take so much time. You need to make sure the other site is linking to you and keeps your link up. You need to take out broken links. (I know you can right scripts to go out and check this stuff) And you actually need to contact thousands of webmasters. Even if you pull your listing from a database you still have to enter them into the database to begin with. That is why I link the co-op. It is easy. You put up the code and it just works. 2) Traditional link exchanges usually involves extensive cross linking. Basically every site links to every other site. The co-op handles this because the links come up randomly. But they aren't static. What you joined a link exchange that managed your link directory for you? You placed the code on your site or gave FTP access and the Exchange automatically sends up all of your links with the correct text, all categorized, etc. I know some people would be leary about the FTP thing but you can set up FTP accounts with limited access. Also what if you could say, I'm providing links from these two sites but I want links back to this other site. That is kinda what the co-op does now with the ability to transfer weight to another site but it would seem to be a small leap to add a module to the co-op that included a completely managed link directory. I'm thinking something like Link Market merged with the Co-op. OK, enough of my ranting. Probably too many topics covered in a single post. haha.
There has to be some additional factor because any worthy but unknown site that suddenly gets slashdotted or big exposure on some national media will gather a lot of inbound links quickly, I'm sure this happens all the time. There must be some profile of inorganic link gain that the search engines use to determine who to ban for illegitimate link gains. Andi
Not hard to find thousands of co-op or "inorganic" links that are gone if the spider goes back to the page 2 seconds later.
That may be it. Maybe fast, large link gains are scrutinized closely and must pass certain tests or are deemed spam. Andi
who knows what the real trigger is for the spam filter. It could be a lot of links very quickly but like I (and others) have pointed out, there are lots of legitimate ways to get a lot of links very quickly through marketing, press releases, media, etc. BUT, it is possible that having that many links VANISH just as quickly as you get them sets off red flags. People have been saying this about the coop for a long time. I think their fears may have come to fruition. But the co-op is still a great idea and Shawn has built an awesome foundation. I just think that it needs to adapt to the changes in the industry.
If it is only new sites, fine. What about the older ones that others claim have fallen out? If that is true, perhaps someone should point all their weight at Yahoo.Com or something
What is unusual about the frequency or expediency with which one acquires back-links? An extremely popular site, and or a site that has been slash-dotted could easily experience the same results, ie., a rampant influx of back-links. So now they should be dropped from an SE because of that?
But that doesn't seem to be the case, there is more to it--some filter that keeps genuine, organic link-gain from triggering the spam tag.
I really do not see how. But back to the point. If this is really happening, then what really is to stop someone from blasting their competition off the charts? Is there a filter for that?
I shifted 80,000 weight to a competitor's site yesterday. We'll see if this works. They were already ranked top 5 in Yahoo, Google, and MSN. I picked them because in the event that I actually HELP them in Google and MSN they were already ranked well anyway and for a term I'm not interested in. I don't think Yahoo singled out the co-op or Digital Point per se. I think it was a combination of things and if you had a lot of weight in the co-op and get a lot of links very quickly, it triggered the filter. Another example. I have over 300 sites in the co-op. All of them giving up their weight to 3 sites. Those 3 sites all got banned. None of the other 297 sites did because though they had the co-op links, they weren't GETTING links. I don't know how many more examples we need to throw out there. We'll see if I can actually get a competitor banned. lol
I hope that your experiment fails, otherwise it opens up the possibilty of getting a site banned without having to put in too much effort to do so. It would be pretty easy to buy a PR5 site, build it up to 50K pages and just use the weight on the opposition - that's a frightening thought for anyone who relies on income from websites. Yahoo and MSN do for some people provide large amounts of traffic, wiping them out that easily should be difficult to do.
300 sites in Co-op.. wow I have only 10 sites, and the 1 site I pointed all my weight to got banned in Yahoo. It sure seems like having too much weight (links) pointing to a site have a negative effect in Yahoo (and maybe now MSN)?
I agree with you. It just doesn't seem right.. This means if someone can point his 80,000 weight at say "Google.com" or "Microsoft.com", will Yahoo banned Google.com or Microsoft.com from its SERP? Logically, it makes no sense. If Yahoo allows it happen, they're messed up!
I have a feeling this experiment will work though I don't think it will take just a few days to work. I had been accumulating links for 60 days (however my weight is much higher now than it was when I started). My site got up to 1.5 million links, not all from them coop but nonetheless, i'm sure a good amount came from the coop. This can't work for huge sites like microsoft.com and google.com because it is likely a percentage of your overall link total. Meaning if microsoft has 49 MILLION links, to have a thousand, even 1 million co-op links added, it would not set off any red flags. Most of the huge sites on the internet don't need to worry, however I'd venture to say that most of the people in the co-op have competitors that are well within the range of vulnerability. I'll keep you informed. I pray it fails because you are right... what a scary day it would be if Yahoo allows this. I guess I just want to find out once and for all.
Whilst MS etc might have a huge amount of backlinks, how many coop accounts would it require to get them dropped. If your experiment worked, there are certainly people out there that would go to the trouble of joining together in order to remove some of the big sites. The publicity that yahoo would get from something like that happening would be amazing - whether any of it would be good PR is another matter.
this is true, getting rapdi bl's cant get u banned, but it CAN put you in the sandbox which sometimes might similate a ban
with all due respect, my 3 sites are not simply "sandboxed" they are outright banned. I have confirmed this through an email to the search team (though they didn't give me the reason why). I went from 5,000 links to 1.5 million on 3 different sites in 60 days. All three sites were banned. They don't rank under a search for the domain and are NO LONGER being crawled by the spiders when they were previously being hit every single day. If I simply dropped in the rankings (like going from #1 to #600) then I would agree with you, but that is not what happened. My sites are delisted. And now that I have narrowed it down to the rapid growth of links via the co-op, my test is to see if a competitor can be banned in the same manner. Google at least takes a more logical approach to links. They wont ban you for something you can't control (like someone else linking to you) but they WILL devalue the links to the point where they are virtually worthless. If Yahoo did that, I'd be fine because I was ranked in the top 10 even prior to using the co-op.
Isnt that almost as bad - if you rely on link building to rise + maintain your rankings then for your link building to become devalued means that you will lose your competitive edge ?
I hope I am misunderstanding you. Are you saying that having links devalued is just as bad as being outright banned? That comparison isn't even CLOSE to valid. Like I said, I was in the top 10 BEFORE I used the co-op. So if Yahoo would have simply made my co-op links worthless, I'd still be in the top 10. But they didn't. They banned me. So to answer your question.... NO it isn't just as bad.