But what determines if a link is spam or not spam. In reality all links in signatures are spam. Someone could consider my signature links spam. They're there simply to improve my site and hopefully get some of the members viewing my posts to click on them. Simply that makes them spam and you could say my motives are very similar to a spammer who automates 1000 posts with links per minute. I know you could program some programming rules extra but based on what?
The system doesn't bother applying the algorithm to signatures that are impossible to be seen by search engines to start with (non-logged in users don't see your signature to begin with). No point in wasting the resources to apply follow/nofollow to things that a search engine would never see.
Oh i see, ok so that means that premium member sigs get seen and non premium sig links dont get seen? So the algo effectively only applied to premium member sig links.
Good catch. Might be why the opening statement in the thread says... and is followed by... Nothing gets past this crew. [Eventually]
If you don't like sarcasm, you might try reading at least the opening post before responding to a thread.
Never said i didn't like it did I? Maybe you should read the reply before responding yourself, a little friendly advice right back at ya.
So, if a visitor has to be logged in to see the links, is Google able to pick them up for SEO advantages?
Damnit! - Here I was singlehandedly keeping P&R busy knowing that I was helping us ALL!! That knowledge will definately slow my posts down.
As it has many. Seems a lot of people that provide good help are not any more. There are still some just don't seem like as many. Most people at least want to get a link out of it when they help. IMO we're going to lose a lot of people that usually help a lot of people. and yes people I know, this should not be ones SEO methods but many people like to gain back links from forums.
It would have to. Sometimes I ask why I'm here so much when I should be doing my own sites. I'd answer myself with the 'do-follow' and that allowed me to spend an hour researching a topic or an answer. If I haven't got that then... I gotta go work my site.
If a useless dofollow link is the only value people see in the site, then they definitely are better off elsewhere. I think the real problem is people that are "new" to the site (as in registered within the last 5 years) don't know how this site started since they weren't there. They only see a forum (that was originally started as a support venue for our EXISTING users) and don't actually recognize what the good parts of the site are (a hint... it's not the forum). Perfect example... the Keyword Tracker: http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker.php?do=help You can do all sorts of interesting things (track not only your search engine ranking changes, but those of your competitors)... Just because you (not directed at anyone in particular) don't know about it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are over 100,000 users that DO use the keyword tracker, 50,000+ of which have used it since before this forum even existed. They are tracking history for 3,000,000+ keywords across 250,000 websites with more than 250,000,000 points of data. ...or just your own across multiple search engines... ...or track backlink changes or PageRank changes for your site (or your competitors)... This is one of MANY interesting/useful/cool things on the site that a lot of new users are too blind to see because they can't see past it being a forum (since they weren't around when there was everything else WITHOUT a forum). Again... if a useless nofollow link is the best thing you have the ability to find on the site, then well... you might actually be blind? BTW - traffic is up since we made the nofollow change.
I didn't take it personally, but i'm not blind either. I found & used this site for contests and have purchased a keyword thingy here (that I never use anyway). I'm already #1 for a lot of searches so keywords isn't important to me. In between contests, I started playing in P&R, and the ONLY reason I started playing in there was doing YOU a favour in return for DP providing me with my business logos (which I see daily). Over time I learnt it was great for backlinks and I've played in there ever since (in between contests). I'm glad you are getting busier, means I don't need to feel guilty using DP for just the stuff I need. Truly, I hope it continues for a long time as it has been helpful to me. I'm just adding my thoughts as a regular contributor, not to piss anyone off.
You don't need to post in Politics/Religion as a favor. That area is a cesspool, I wouldn't wish having to read that garbage on anyone. In fact the ONLY reason we have a Politics/Religion area is not to proliferate it, but rather make it so people who don't care about those topics don't have to see them. We mulled the idea of just banning those topics, but as a compromise, we gave those topics a dark hole so to speak so "normal" people don't have to see them. lol If the site serves no purpose for you, don't force yourself to use it. I certainly don't use sites that serve no purpose to me. Re: you not having a use for the keyword tracker... a lot of people don't, I was just saying it's one of many things that are highly useful to some people. Another is Digital Point Ads (a full blown marketplace to sell ads on your site with a bidding system). http://advertising.digitalpoint.com/ Also quite popular with sites that are large enough that they are starting to outgrow AdSense type rev share. For people in the market for a domain/site to buy, there are close to 10,000 active listings for sale, all searchable by keyword, links, PR, etc, etc... http://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/ Again, not nothing useful for everyone, but for people buying/selling sites and domains it is. If you run a large vBulletin 4 forum, the search engine we built for this site has more or less become the standard "must have" for vB4 forums... http://products.digitalpoint.com/vbulletin-sphinx-search.php Again, only useful if you run a large vBulletin 4 forum... but if you do, it's indispensable.
Definatly not the only good thing. I'm just saying, a lot of the people that help aren't going to now. There going to do it elsewhere to gain a few links. Not me but a lot of people have/will. I know it's not that accurate but Alexa shows the site going down.