70 replies to this topic

[Jill]

What I feel, without being able to prove, is that Jeff's site may have suffered what I defined as "Rank Depression":

Don't they have SEO Prozac for that?

[glengara]

On the links thing, too much of his network is coming up in a similar pages search IMO, and these are probably not a good idea:

bridaltips.com/textlinks.htm
autobuyingtips.com/textlinks.htm
babyresourCe.com/textlinks.htm
housebuyingtips.com/textlinks.htm
collegelookup.com/textlinks.htm
flower-shopper.com/textlinks.htm
toyavenue.com/textlinks.htm
debtwizards.com/textlinks.htm
bytheBooks.com/textlinks.htm
carbuyingTips.com/textlinks.htm

Edited by glengara, 21 March 2006 - 06:59 AM.

[Jill]

On the links thing, too much of his network is coming up in a similar pages search IMO, and these are probably not a good idea:

C'mon now, Glengara, it can't be something with the site, it's just gotta be other people causing the problem!

[Michael Martinez]

As I have said many times before, my network of sites cross-link to each other heavily, and they have not suffered in the least for doing so. There are several large commercial networks which also cross-link heavily (think of AOL/TimeWarner) and they don't suffer either.

So the cross-linking of networked sites is a major red herring that I really wish the SEO community would downplay.

It's worth keeping an eye on, since "bad neighborhoods" can easily identify each other, but I don't believe that network looks like a bad neighborhood. The content is pretty clean and there is nothing wrong with openly cross-promoting your network of sites.

[Jill]

Michael, it's one thing when the linking between sites makes sense from a people perspective. But when sites that have the same owner but no real connection other than that start linking together, that's a pretty big red flag to the engines, as it should be.

Years ago, that's what caused the dreaded PR0 penalites. I don't think they bother to show the PR0 anymore, but the outcome can be similar.

[Michael Martinez]

Well, I see the connection between CNN and Time, but what is the connection between CNN and AOL? Other than that they are owned by the same company, there really is no connection.

NBC used to cross-promote to NBCi all the time. There was no connection exception ownership.

Disney converted all its subsidiary sites to sub-domains, but not every major corporation follows that pattern.

I remember all the PR 0 penalties. At one point, Google was handing them out like candy for many reasons, and probably quite deservedly so in many cases.

But I just don't see the cross-promotion being an issue with this particular network. It's open, it's honest, and it's verifiable through domain registration data. If the big guys can do it, the little guys should be able to do it, too.

[Scottie]

There are very different rules for "must find" sites like AOL and CNN than there are for "this is my own little network" sites.

Don't be fooled into thinking that something is OK because the major brands do it... search engines have certain sites that are expected to appear in the searches regardless of how they behave.

Unless you've reached the level of celebrity where a search result would be negatively impacted by your site not appearing there, (and I don't mean YOU would be negatively imacted but that a majority of users would be frustrated by not being able to find the site) heavily crosslinking unrelated sites is a bad idea.

[Michael Martinez]

Scottie, SEOs have talked about these differences in rules for years, but I've never seen any credible evidence that they exist. But let's assume for the sake of this discussion that such differences in rules are not relevant to the ranking situation for Jeff's network.


I propose that this difference in opinion really boils down to whether Jeff's network might trip the "bad neighborhood" red flag.

I don't feel it should, other people feel it may.

Can we say anything more definitive than that? It's a worthwhile discussion because people need to understand that "bad neighborhoods" may not always be someone else. We may become the bad neighborhoods, and there is no easy way to determine that.

What factors might contribute to a "bad neighborhood" status? Here are a few. Let's see how many others people can suggest.

• Linking to known spam sites ("known" by the search engines)
• Lack of inbound links from trusted sites
• Lack of outbound links to trusted sites
• Strong linkage between related sites
• Lack of outbound links to unrelated, unknown sites (new sites)
• High number of inbound links from low quality sites

So far, I don't see enough red flags with Jeff's network, but what else do you folks think might serve as red flags?

I've already shared a more detailed opinion privately with Jeff, and I haven't repeated all that here in this discussion. Assume from this point forward that I'm just playing devil's advocate.

[glengara]

*As I have said many times before..*

Careful there MM, you're in danger of beginning to sound somewhat pompous :-)

[Michael Martinez]

OFFTOPIC:

*As I have said many times before..* Careful there MM, you're in danger of beginning to sound somewhat pompous :-) You mean ... I'm not there yet? I must be sick. Usually, this far into the discussion, I'm getting rolleyes, slapped, and other smilies.

[Jill]

Michael, you must not have looked very hard at those links glengara posted.

If it walks like a link farm, and quacks like a link farm...

Please explain why the same exact link farm page for car buying tips is on the baby resource site? There's no reason other than link farming that I can tell. It's classic, in fact.

[glengara]

*Years ago, that's what caused the dreaded PR0 penalites.*

Seems to still be happening, Jill :-)

http://www.webmaster...rum30/33577.htm

[Jill]

Seems to still be happening, Jill :-)

Shows how much I keep up with the penalty circuit!

[Michael Martinez]

Michael, you must not have looked very hard at those links glengara posted.

If it walks like a link farm, and quacks like a link farm...

The pages are not identical, and many of the links on those pages are to internal pages on the same domains.

Sorry, but that ain't link farming. I helped design link farms. I know how they work and what they look like.

The circular linkage is accomplished through the footers on the main index pages of the domains, and that ain't link farming either.


ON EDIT: Which is not an argument against the possibility of a penalty. Google doesn't just penalize classic link farms.

[jeffostroff]

Gelngara:

Thanks for pointing out the textlink files, I forgot about them. I can certainly remove those "textlink" files from our sites, as I don't think they are needed any longer.

They look like copies of our sitemap on CarBuyingTips. Might have been some experimenting we were doing last year. We'll see if that does anything.

But keep in mind, if all these links are pointing to all the sites in our network, I would think that the CarBuyingTips site would have suffered the same Rank Depression that the bridal tips site suffered.

It seems like we all have valid theories here, that hold up for one site, but not the other.

I have long suspected that someone at Google likes our CarBuyingTips site because we rank so well and so easily in so many keywords while we tread water with all our other sites.

I need to do more press interviews with the Bridaltips site to improve the quality of our incoming links. We never trade links with other sites to prevent link farm issues, so any incoming links we get, we have no control over them, and I hope they don't come from farm animal porn sites.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could pay Google $150 and fill out a "What The Heck's Wrong With My Site" form, and have them tell you something like, "you left a semi colon out of one of your Java routines and it made it look like spam!"

Anyone know what Larry and Sergey's favorit booze is? I'll send them a bottle.

Edited by jeffostroff, 21 March 2006 - 03:09 PM.