Hey I was woundering if anyone knows much about the link populartity program of http://www.powerlinks.com/ and is it worth it to join. Thanks
I've never heard of this service, but on it's face, the claim "hundreds of links instantly" give me cause for concern. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
I visited their forums. None of the members had any green in the PR bar; which isn't a good sign. PRogram seems to create a lot of cross linking - typical of such systems - and google hates that.
I joined PowerLinks about a week ago. Within minutes of set-up there were over 180 links to my site, there are now 579 members linking to each of the four sites I've installed it on. But I'm about to pare that down, as many are not relevant. PowerLinks allows its members to filter links, also to approve/disapprove links when new members join. That's why out of 759 members, only 579 are pointing to me. Yes, if you utilize it "as is," it's a link farm with lots of irrelevant links to you. However, if you take the time to set the filters (by turning off irrelevant links one at a time - or entire categories of links - for example), you can increase the quality & relevance of the links to your site. I'm EXTREMELY new to SEO and link exchanging. Three of the sites I have PowerLinks on are new sites with PR0. PowerLinks is not the only method I'm using to increase my visibility - some of the sites utilize Reciprocal Manager as well, and I'm also hooking up with vertical portals. I will be watching them over the next 2-3 months to see how they do. If you want to check them out from time to time, here are links, with their current PR: http://www.talenthost.net - TalentHost.net - PR4 http://www.lazymoneytools.com - LazyMoneyTools.com - PR0 http://www.fasterpussycatcatering.com - Faster Pussycat Catering - PR0 http://www.simplysplendidgifts.com - Simply Splendid Gifts - PR0 It costs me $15.95/month to maintain these four sites. There is a $10 set-up fee, which I assume is there to be paid to the referrer, not because there is any setup involved. So, I make $10.00 every time someone joins because they want to reciprocate links with me. So far, I've made no money, but like I said, I only signed up a week ago. I believe that PowerLinks.com is in it for the money, not because they have a desire to aid us in our link exchanging. But, if it works, who cares? If it doesn't work, they'll get less than $50 out of me. They'll profit from me, but I'll have learned a relatively cheap lesson. Fortunately, I can afford to "throw away" $50 so that we can all learn if they're worth it or not. I'll keep you posted over the next 2-3 months. Lynda Williams President, TalentHost.net President, L. J. Williams Distribution
How did you verify that? Also, I'm only seeing 150 or so in total. http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=link:http://www.talenthost.net&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt Oh... And Welcome to the Forum
Thanks for the welcome! While I'm the first to admit that I'm a major newbie when it comes to link exchanges, PR and more, I've found that using search engines to determine how many sites are linking to you can be misleading at the very biginning of a campaign. Because I just set up the Powerlinks a few days ago, not all the links have been spidered yet. We both know that it takes more than a couple of days for the search engines to spider new links. In fact, today I learned something new - Yahoo! is MUCH MORE reliable in reporting links to a site than Google is! Google says there are only 55 links to my site! The way I confirmed it was not at all scientific. Within my PowerLinks control panel, there is a button called "Who's linking to me?" When you click that, there's a pop-up of a list of every PowerLinks member who is linking to you, with a link to their web site AND to the link to you in their PowerLinks page. I checked these at random and found that every one I checked was there, but I was too lazy to go through all 579 (up to 586 now). Also, logic tells me that since I'm in their database, I am linked from every member's PowerLinks page who has not filtered me out. What remains to be seen is, because the links are on dynamic pages, whether they are actually being spidered. My brain is still trying to wrap around that concept. Again, logic tells me that since these pages don't reside on servers as static pages but are created when someone clicks on the link in the .asp or .php page, how can they be spidered? And, if they can't be spidered, how can search engines use them to increse my ranking? PowerLinks has recently addressed that, but I still don't quite get it. So, I'm going to give it a couple of months and see what happenes. Like I said - I'm lucky; I can afford to spend $50 or so on this test.
Thank you very much indeed for such a detailed response. You're right, Yahoo! does tend to be a lot more accurate than using Google for link checking. What has the service been like so far? Do they respond quickly to emails?
They respond very quickly, with REAL answers, not some robotic copy-paste thing like so many companies are doing now. Actually, I'm not sure which is more reliable - Yahoo! or Google. For example, Yahoo! says your site only has about 331 links to it, while Google says about 626. And the Powerlinks site itself? Google - a little over 3,200; Yahoo! - about 30,500! that's quite a discrepancy! My head is swimming - I'm going to dinner now! LOL Lynda
I started using PowerLinks in early September for my main site. I recently added a second site, and an additional category for the first one. I love it. The people who run it are knowledgeable, and very quick to respond to any questions you may have (same day). The way to ask a question is on their forum which you have access to, once you join. The first site costs me $10 a month. The second and third are $2.00 each. Right now, they have about 700 members. I filter casinos and romance sites, (you can choose to not display sites by category or down to specific sites) so those sites don’t display my link (it happens automatically) because I don’t display theirs. On the last two GG backlink updates my 6 month old site went from 39 links to 50. Ten of the eleven new links were PowerLinks. On the most recent update, I went from 50 to 101. Of the 51 new links, about 47 were PowerLinks. When you join, you choose to host the ‘directory’ on your site, or on their site. I have one of each type. The Audience Response Systems site in my sig uses a page hosted on their site. You can see it by clicking the PowerLinks link, bottom right of my home page. For the NY Rangers site in my sig, I host it on my site. If you host it yourself, you get a chuck of php or asp code to paste in your page. Please know that if you visit anyone’s PowerLinks page and click ‘exchange links’ and then you join, that person receives $10. It’s a nice deal for sure. What’s best is that it is totally maintenance free. When new people subscribe, you don’t have to do anything. Their site automatically appears in your directory and you appear in theirs. No emails, building reciprocals, or checking for deleted links. It’s really very cool…. I highly recommend it.
Google doesn't accurately report backlinks. Repeat after me. Don't use the Google link command, it's worthless! Don't use the Google link command, it's worthless! Don't use the Google link command, it's worthless! Don't use the Google link command, it's worthless! Use Yahoo for now. If you want to see some interesting results, use Optilink to get all your links and order them by Google Page Rank. So do so for your top 5 competitors and I betcha your linking strategy will become a lot more clear
longcall911, sounds interesting but i fear the dup content filter ______ Link Exchange 4 Translation Agencies UK & Canada
I just signed up tonight. I will keep you in touch. I know the duplicate content filter will cause a page to go south in the rankings, but will it also prevent the page from passing PageRank? As far as I know the page still gets indexed. It would make sense to filter the PageRank.
I tried and moved on. It was great to get links for a new site but the more I learned about the Google's algo the more it seemed like a bad idea.