What is difference between link exchange and link farm?

I don't really understand the difference between link exchange and link farm. Link farm is look down upon by search engines but link exchange doesn't fall into the same category.

Link farm, as I understand it, are many web pages with many links pointing to certain webpages. It acts as a keyword spam. The pages would also have relevant content.

Link exchange, uses many webpages with many links linking to other people's website and that website would do the same and link back. The pages would also have relevant content.

If I am asking a stupid question, please be nice.

 

i think u have the most of it covered link farms are also known as free for all links.

the other thing about "Link Exchanges" is that the site that you are exchanging links with might not necisarrily have loads of link pages on there site maybe just one or two.

maybe someone else with more knowledge can give ya some more info

 

Had a fellow request quite a few exchanges from me across me 10s and 10s of sites I operate. His websites are nothing but links. The index page is a huge list of categories on any topic you can think of. Those categories then branch to many sub-categories. All the while, hundreds of links per page and absolutely no content, what-so-ever.

That's a link farm.

A proper link exchange you want to deal with has a small directory and its maybe 5% of the total content of the site. The categories are very themed towards that site. In otherwords, if I'm running a golf site, I want all golf / sports / sports clothing related categories in my directory. If I have a link section on this golf site that has hundreds of categories not themed including pharmacy, gambling, and other sites like this, I'm now running a link farm.

Does that help?

 

It's a pretty wavey line between a link exchange and a link farm. By many people's definitions directorys are link farms. I'd class a link farm as having uncategoried links with little or no effort to make them useful to a visitor.

 

Everyone submits to directories though. They aren't treated as link farms it seems. Lots of people run their own directories to help drive links.

So what makes a link farm penalized and a directory not?

 

the main fact that link farm are normally list of un-categorised links that you can submit to and be added to straight away such scripts as "free for all links"

 

I don't know anything about link farm though my job is about link exchange .I think that is why I was fired by my boss yesterday .

 

Link farms are associated with bad neighbourhoods, which you want to keep away from.

 

It seems that based on some definitions, agsites could be considered a link farm.

In some others, it is just a huge directory.

It does seem the lines are wavy. Personally, I think the above site is just a monster resource for related categories - it's certainly the largest I've come across in my brief while doing this. But will the algos view it otherwise?

 

According to Wikipedia, a link farm is "any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group." The purpose is to spam the index of search engines (spamdexing) in order to dominate search results.

 

I think the difference is in the number of links... I you exchange links with thousand of websites and have them all on one page, then it's a link farm...

 

Link Farm sites are those sites which are made for putting links only and nothing else.

 

Can you post an example of Link Farm?

I would really like to see it.

 

I know that this post is super old, but to any extent would you call Reddit a link farm?
How about BuddyMarks and Story Follower?