One of my sites has links from many .info websites that have nothing but searched results plus a bunch of google ads. The pages usually have long URL's loaded with keywords and hyphens, and show a long list of related websites in a format similar to search engine pages. Will those links hurt my ranking (especially for Google)? They look like machine generated pages, so is there a way to stop them from linking to my site? Or it doesn't really matter? They do show up on Yahoo inlink results, but not in backlinkwatch, not sure about Google. Thanks.
As celt said it won't hurt your rankings. These are probably scripts which take up a keyword(s) and publish it with lots of related links from the search engines. As they are just linking to the source , they can't be blamed of ripping content off. By this method they get hits from search engines the keyword(s). But these websites never stay for long :/
You are not going to get any advantage ie PR increase due to those links. But make sure that you don't link back to any of those sites from your site or you will get penalized for link farming.
Not expecting any benefits from those links at all. As long as they don't hurt my site, I'll just ignore them. Here is another question though: We keep hearing if you have links from directories in the "bad" neighborhood, Google will penalize your site. I believe it is true. But how does Google know that the site owner actively sought for those links, vs. the directories voluntarily linked to them (or worse, competitors did it)? Is it still true that as long as you don't link back to them, there is no need to worry about those questionable inbound links?
No... if you link to bad neighbourhood sites you will be penalized. You cannot be punished for links pointing to your site.
That bit isn't actually true... Matt Cutts admitted in a recent interview that it is actually possible to harm someone else's rankings by pointing a bunch of link juice at them: http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html Couple that with the recent Witch Hunt: http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2007/06/07/official-witch-hunting-season-opens/ And yeah, it's not true anymore that inbound links can't hurt you. You are right though, it's not about inbound links from bad neighborhoods though. Zanswer, those are from scraper sites... they scrape the search engines for content, and just display ads. Those have been around forever. If you have top 10 rankings for anything that might give traffic, someone at some point will scrape those search results, and you will get a link back. They're harmless. -Michael
I heard somewhere that Google lowers page rank if a bunch of spam sites link to you. (as a response to link farming)
Thanks for the clarification. I have been a little concerned, and maybe annoyed, by those sites to be honest. It is good to know. Nothing wrong with .info. It is just that 95% of the sites I was talking about happen to be .info, plus a few .pl I guess
Please note that some of the advertising services that you might be using could be responsible for adding your ad on these pages. I know miva does this.
What is the context of the links on those sites? What's written in the anchor text? I wouldn't mine any other sites, .info or not, linking up to me.
I'd investigate it heavily if I was you - it could be someone trying to destroy your Rankings. You should be able to find out if the links are being generated by a system like the COOP or whatever, then if you can track the system down and contact them to see if they can shed any light on who's doing it. It may be worth notifying google in advance of what you have noticed. Read the fobes article as it helps explain it: http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html
they are linking with "no follow" atribute Angela I saw a lot of those sites linking to mine and reported a few to google useless I believe..
Most likely they are scraper sites like traffic equalizer that scrape content from other site to build their sites. They use the .info domains because they can be bought for .99 cents for the first year. I wouldn't think it would hurt and probably help a little.
Thanks for the advice. Some of those sites I noticed before are gone already. So I think it is more likely that they are just scraper sites as others mentioned. I'll keep my eyes open though, if they start coming too quickly I'll send G an email. Thanks everyone. This board is great!
Just for more clarification, the scraper sites are mostly .info's because of the cheap prices right now. Spammers don't want to spend anymore money than they have to on a domain.