Published: Nov 26, 2008 - 07:37 am
Story Found By: mrmunchies 1666 Days ago
Category: Link Building
10 Comments
10 Comments
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:


Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Digital Marketing Depot. Upcoming online events include:
Comments
What if Google set up a bunch of websites across different industries and purchased inLinks service for these sites? Then they could just hand out massive penalties to whatever domain links to their sites. Goolge could easily do this (for what amounts to a drop in the bucket for them) and really damage this service. I doubt Google operates like this, but you never know...
From the author:"Okay so since I wrote this early yesterday, they’ve significantly shortened the length of the snippet displayed in Inlinks. The column is still wide, but the characters returned are fewer. Good work Inlinks - that’s effectively closed the loophole I’d say. It does make the snippet rather pointless, as you can no longer get a sense of the context of the phrase in question (which certainly did have some value), but it’s less exploitable."
It may not seem to be their style, but theyll likely have some humans on the case. As I mentioned on the blog post, inlinks have shortened the snippet since I wrote this post, effectively eliminating the ability to track-back with phrases, so the method Im talking about for opening the db has been closed - but youre right, Google could go on the offensive and break their own rules, paying off inlinks in the short-term to try and kill a few sites off, but chances are theyll rely more on temporal link indicators to flag sites for manual review if they cant find a footprint on the seller sites.I think its simply going to be a new rule for manual link reviewers: if a link looks randomly placed, and is not editorially referenced or mentioned, (and is commercial?), demote link value. But thats a hell of a lot harder to scale than most things the big G does.The future of link buying like this will just become like many other old styles - a level in a tiered link laundry machine (read, extremely effective and low risk if done right).
Naoise - what over-thought nonsense!Steps:Get list of all known link buyers. (already exists)Find current bought terms.Find pages that link to current buyer using these terms.Find other external links on page.Use this new data to find other sites these new people bought links on, by matching term and URL.Go to step 1.Simple, easy, effective.
BTW, this whole "google doesnt use manual review is BS... It doesnt take much for them to set a full time Google Guy from india on the case. And now that Im thinking about it, I dont think Ill be using inlinks for any of my quality sites. :(
@losangelesmarketingIt doesnt take much, but by no means does that mean it is happening, certainly not likely enough to call statements otherwise...bullshit.
@losangelesmarketingIt doesnt take much, but by no means does that mean it is happening, certainly not likely enough to call statements otherwise...bullshit.Actually, ViperChill, Google not only has a manual review process, but also the guidelines for thier reviewers has been leaked several times. Its no secret that they do that on a very regular basis. They have way more than one full time guy on it.
@MikeNot quite sure what youre trying to say. Get list of all known link buyers. (already exists)Do you think that every link buyer has been identified and exists on a list somewhere? Umm, no, that doesnt exist. Not even close. Reminds me of the days of the inktomi blacklist... but no, there is no comprehensive list of people/sites who buy links, not at googleHQ, not anywhere. Find current bought terms.What do you mean find current bought terms? Are you talking about within some system specifically? You dont need to buy money words to build pagerank... I call your over-thoughtism and raise you an over-simplification
@mike - Easy and simple, yet flawed. What about the natural linking caught up in this web that your system would weave? How do you determine if they are innocent or not?
OK, so allow me to think for you :)"Do you think that every link buyer has been identified and exists on a list somewhere. ...But no, there is no comprehensive list of people/sites who buy links, not at googleHQ, not anywhere."I love poeple that "know" the unknowable ;)But who cares? That is the fallacy that 100% is required, and amounts to a one word argument: "comprehensive". A database can consist of one entry, so if Google know of one, single link buyer, thatsa da database.All you need to find paid links is:A database of links and URLs, aka the Google Index.One known bought link.If we make the (rather accurate) assumptions that bought links:Use the same link text repeatedly for the same URL.Exist on pages with other bought links.The pattern matching is trivially easy. Find said paid link, find all pages that have the same link (same anchor, same URL) and then find other links on those pages that have the same traits. Triv-i-al."What about the natural linking caught up in this web that your system would weave? How do you determine if they are innocent or not?"*I* dont do anything. I am a man with a Mac. I am simply speculating as to what SEs might do, and addressing crazy, convoluted conspiracy theories ;)You assume it matters that "innocents" are caught, or that payment is the issue. it isnt. Mass, similar links that add no value to the algo are. Paid link / anchor text spamming and "natural" link spamming aka linkbait are equally useless, so who cares if payment was involved?Ultimately its the wrong question: Who cares if a few innocent are caught if the results improve? This isnt a court of law, it is a relevance test, and 90% improvement for 10% loss is improvement.Now, see, Im all for convoluted ideas, simplicity through convolution is my personal motto, but the simplest answer is always the best place to start, until it proves inneffective, like how early SEs simply used the keyword tag, and now they are hugely complicated.