PR3 with 4040 Backlinks?! You guys want to see something really funky? I've been watching this PR7 site for some time. It has been PR7 for almost a year now, and just now, it dropped to PR3, yet still has 4040 backlinks. Check it out... www.alertbot.com Almost all of its links are reciprocal links or off-themed links. 4040 backlinks and PR3? Unbelievable. This may tell us that Google has put some strict dampening on off-themed links and reciprocals - or maybe this site has had some massive negative PR penalies added because of the off-themed reciprocal linking. Hexed
In my opinion, this would be EXCEPTIONALLY bad. That would mean a competitor can damage our PR simply by adding a bunch of off-topic links from their sites to our site! Plus, why can't Goog just shut up and let people link to who they want to and link from who they want to? I swear, they want to control the SE world!
You know nikao, that may be true. But I can't think of one true monopoly that was ultimately beneficial to those forced to use it's services.
how would they do that? if they were your competitor, then their site would be at least mildly related - so any random topic links they put would hurt them just as much. I'm sure there are more factors to it. -Greg
I saw the same thing happen to this guy. He was a pr 8 with over 6000 backlinks two weeks ago. http://www.refermyloan.com
Only theory here... I think possibly google has wised up to site-wide links. This would be really easy to do ... just cap the total PR or the number of backlinks that count towards PR between 2 sites. I have heard of lots of sites with massive PR drops and they seem to be sites with LOTS of backlinks ... I don't know what kinds of backlinks, but from looking at the sites (this example also) I would say the sites are not "worthy" of thousands of backlinks and so they probably bought some site-wide backlinks which are now devalued. Like I said, just theiry, but would be easy for google to implement and would explain a lot of the examples of dropped PR that I have seen.
How about this: You are an online fish store. I create 200 bogus, crappy one page sites, but make sure there's at least onelink to each so they get spidered. Then I place hundreds, nay THOUSANDS of totally off-topic links to you. GooGoo blasts you for all those off-topic links. They have no way of knowing who added those links or why they are there, only that they ARE there! They follow their little algo and you are screwed. It seems that if they are punishing the faithful for "naughty" backlinks, then this method of hurting a competitor would work. New steps to learn in the GooGoo dance.
Nice idea SEOgulper ... hehe Except I don't think IBLs are that important in the SERPs - only in the PR and that has been downgraded in the SERPs so that it has a much smaller value.
Well two problems I see with that; one you would be making a huge financial investment in doing something like that. With all those different domain names and hosting. Which brings me to the second thought - if you did it all with subdomains and shared hosting plans, a C block filter (if there is one) or something similar would certainly hit you. Plus I don't think google got so popular by being easily thrown like that. -Greg
I have to wonder if you are just trying to stir this thread up with that statement. It has been widely proven that IBL's with the proper anchor text can make or break a sites ability to reach top positioning. No other single factor has as much weight with rankings.
Of couse, my entire premise is completely hypothetical, and would be a complete waste of time. I just don't believe GooGoo would let itself be manipulated this way, therefore I find it hard to believe they are "punishing" people for having off-topic IB links. Theoretically at least, we have no control over who links TO us! Now, that said.... IF GooGoo is beginning to trace Whois data to determin domain ownership and also tracking IP addresses to filter out multi-domains from one IP, then that's a horse of a different color! The power of the great GooGoo God becomes ever more infinite.
Perhaps you might think that..and all things being equal, that would be the case. However things are not always so, and that is why this forum exists and why the ideas are discussed. Just up until February it used to be, that with good on page SEO you could get to the top, not any longer. You need links. But what sort? So the great experiment was created and guess what? The page has stalled and gone backwards. On top of that we have created the second experiment with two new sites and two pages [identical except for the text] one which has just one link to it and the other numerous. Guess which one is number 9 at allinanchor after one week? Worried? You should be - it is the one with one link, one IBL. So why is it there?
Ok, Let's see if we can put this in terms that may help. a few facts. Link popularity has *always* been one of the most weighted measures of a pages ranking. It didn't just start in february. Unless you mean february of 1996. The only pages that have ever been easy to rank well with only on-page SEO are non-competitive terms. And it has been that way for at least 8 years. What sort of links? Any link is a good link. There is not a single major engine that is using relevancy in links as yet. It is coming, I think, but it is not here yet. At this stage of the game, a link is a link. Unless of course it is passing no value via a penalty or devaluation.
Agreed. I would think, if anything, google knows that the majority on "on-topic" links are the ones that are created by SEO's. Googles original premise about links being so important was that a surfer visits your site, finds it so much to his liking, that he links to it to let his visitors get a chance to use that excellant site. Now this guy may have a website on farming and the one he linked to may be a webmaster resource that helped his site become much more user friendly. This is just one example of the general flow of natural links. Does that seem on-topic to anyone? And do you really see google devaluing that link that is a true natural link? I sure as heck don't.
What I find interesting is someone who "knows the facts". The self annointed expert. But just in case you read the post wrong let me explain, I said: Did I mention non-competitive terms? No. Did I mention Page Ranking? No. But now that you mention it - please tell me what the importance of Page Ranking is now - do it simply, as I'm a simple person, on a scale of 5, 5, Very Important to, 1, Not at all. And, whilst I am about it, please give me the determination of non-competitive term. Please explain definitively where the "line in the sand is drawn". But did I mention a need for links? Yes. Why? Because Google says that this is now more important than before [M. Cutts, Googles representative at a conference in London] which confirmed what was thought after the February 2004, Austin [enough specifics for you to know the date?]. Note it was Google who said it - not me. What he did not do was to say " Any link is a good link" - in fact he avoided discussion on it - nor did he say "There is not a single major engine that is using relevancy in links as yet". So what is anchor text then? Nor did he say "At this stage of the game, a link is a link. Unless of course it is passing no value via a penalty or devaluation." Now what are these then? Value, Penalty, Devaluation? Value? That is passing PR that has nothing to do with relevancy! So what you are saying then is that a link may be a link subject to a set of rules applied, in which case the statement "a link is a link" is null and void. To summarise, what I was attempting to do was to show that what had gone before in Google should not be taken as the Gospel now [unless you are annointed or you are an Ostrich] and links are not just links anymore unless you happen to be in the business of swapping links....oh mymy... I've just noticed, your site just happens to be textlinkbrokerage.
I studied two postgraduate degrees (one a PH.D.), and the idea of citing papers is common, and the founders of google.com transferred the idea to commerce. However, the academic controls of papers are strict and therefore a citation in a paper is controlled and this gives it importance. If you are cited by the IEEE or a leading researcher then you will probably get your Ph.D. (I was advised that 3 papers published guaranteed a Ph.D.) But in commerce people are buying links, and this undermines this concept. I know of one person who just buys links everywhere and also advertisements. He pays google.com $5000 a week. His site appears top on all searches for his industry. The concept of linking is therefore not related to interest or validity but simply money. This then undermines the whole original concept. Add to this doorways, mirrors, etc and the original concept is further weakened and you have what is now seen all over the Internet - a lot of people trying for a few places near the top. Search Engines should look at content, that was always their claim. Content is XML based and not HTML based anyway. If retailers are selling brands (which are the same for all retailers) then a problem is instantly found. How are sites ranked when the products (ie the brands) are the same? The days of asp and hand written html are fading or gone, and XML supported by transforms will mean that HTML sites can be generated.