What is the point of these programs? I was just thinking, let's say myself a joe each create a links page on our sites and that page get a PR5 for both sites and Joe and I exchange links and agree not to add any others so we each pass each othe 80% of the PR5 (or whatever the % is) Now I decide I want to add a 2nd link so Joe does the same and we both get links from a PR4 page. The value passed from 1 link was 5*80%=4 The value passed from the 2 links is (5*80%/2)+(4*80%/2)=3.6 Am I missing something?
Most link exchange programs are commonly referred to as "link farms" Link farms were developed by search engine optimizers in 1999 to take advantage of the Inktomi search engine's dependence upon link popularity. Although link popularity is used by some search engines to help establish a ranking order for search results, the Inktomi engine at the time maintained two indexes. (Wikipedia.com) Because the big dogg of them all, Google, ranks website's link popularity in accordance with a link weighting scheme you might know as PageRank, counting links and building them up with unknown's over these link building programs is highly DISREGARDABLE as a form of link building. Link farming can sometimes be used to build page rank it is commonly believed. However, link farms and link exchange programs are commonly susceptible to manipulation by mischievious webmasters who just join the service and hide their inbound/outbound links (which means no traffic for you) to help build their link popularity. Search engines now keep try of the link farms and counter them by notifying certain attributes associated with these link exchange programs to filter them and any website associated with the link exchange program from their results. This includes GOOGLE who does this and has even started using "Semantic Indexing" where they prevent "all adsense websites" from being indexed. In many cases, your website will be removed from Google and major search engines if you join one. --------------- If you think I wrote alot because I just copy pasted, guess again. I run my own marketing website and web development business. But I don't like to brag now so you'll have to find out what it is on your own. ---------
In other words, you need to research and consider each and every website you link to , who they are linking to, and who you want linking to you. It's a constant system of monitoring and taking control to maintain and improve your page rank. Commonly, many people just buy software to do this for them. I'd do research first on the best software app though.
I understand all the other negative aspects of 'link farms' I am just wondering wouldn't Joe and I be better of with just the 1 link on the links page as opposed to 2 or more? This is just hypothetical.
My personal opinion... never use such sites if you are looking for good SERP's. Always do linking from non-made-for-links sites..That way you will be lot happier in future..