I was looking for linkpartners and while looking at the source code for a lnk page, came across commented out links. My first thought was that they were having a problem with the site who's link was commented out, and it got me thinking. I'm assuming that google ignores code that has been commented out (as you obviously dont want it to affect the page) and thus won't see that link, but what about link-checking programs? It would be a simple and yet sneaky method of getting one-way links: you agree to a recp link exchange, but then comment out the link to the other site. Google ignores the commented out code, but the program your link partner uses doesn't ignore the commented out code - thus finding the link and reporting that you're still linking to them... are any of the auto-checking programs that poorly programmed?
That is correct. There are no auto-checking programs that work but it doesn't seem to stop people using them There are so many ways to hide a link not just in the html, robots.txt and js for example. Think of it this way. What you really want is as many 'high quality' links as possible not 100 times as many 'low quality links'. So don't waste time on obtaining 'low quality' links and even more time on checking them out. Spend the valuable time you save obtaining 'high quality' links. The 'high quality' links that you have don't need to be checked because 99.9% of them will be from responsible site owners. - Michael
Thanks for the reminder. I just went through a few of my sites and checked for deadbeat link partners. There sure are a lot of losers out there determined to hide links in different ways.
Actually, if people are using it, then I guess it might be working. Let me reveal a little SEO secret I had discovered some time back. We all know that putting our main keywords in the first 250 words of the page and putting them in h1 or h2 tags greately improve our chances of ranking well for the keywords. So, while doing some SEO research some time back, I found a sneaky technique used by some SEO Firms. What they used to do was, put their main keywords on top of the page in h1 tags. But since having a few random words on top of the page in h1 tags makes the page look odd, they just put it inside comment tags. And it seemed to work too, as many of them were top ranking pages for their keywords. Looks like it works for links too. Oh man, I don't think I should have revealed this secret of mine for free like this. Now I just hope not many people read this thread At least promise me not to tell it to anyone else. Just use it and benefit yourself. But if you go on telling others about it, it might stop working once many people strat using it, and google finds out. Ayush