I am from a good neighborhood. And you?

[pokaff]

Hello,

I am trying to determine with whom I can or cannot link. So the question is where is the border between good (GN) and bad neighborhood (BN)?

There are 2 things (maybe more) I will look at, (i) site appearance and (ii) back links. I am proposing a few pointers, you are all welcome to comment on that.

(i)
- link farm appearance,
- very unprofessional looking site (maybe not BN, but still no interest)

(ii)
- mostly unrelated themes in the backlinks, like hundreds of links from a few blog about shoes, ...
- obvious spam, like many dating sites links, obvious garbage, even porn
- obvious grey hat stuff (you know what it is when you see it)
- thousands of exchanged links


What do you guys thinks Also where does Google start penalizing?

[Randy]

Can you give an example of a site that has a "link farm appearance" or a "very unprofessional site"? Preferably a site in another niche?

The main thing I look at when deciding whether or not to link to a site is the quality of the writing on the site. I don't get upset about a comma splice here or there, but if the site has obviously rehashed content as its focus, I'm a LOT less likely to link to it.

I'm also reluctant to link to sites which have a lot of obviously-purchased backlinks.

[pokaff]

First, I am not sure if everyone has the same definition of BN. Here I can only talk about what I do not want to link with, but it probably goes beyond BN. So keep the distinction in mind. But what I want to learn from you guys is the real definition of BN. Anyway, to answer Randy:

1/ link farm appearance; in fact, I mean banner farm, but both are BN for me; I dont have example outside poker, I only surf and produce poker sites.
- link farms just means if I see a site with pages and pages of links, I do not like it; more than 5 pages is an alert, more than 10 a no-no;
- banner farms, I think we all know what that is
2/ not professional; hmm;
- either no real content; like some kid from school who thought he could make a quick buck, or someone who does not know poker,
- or extremely bad looking site or hard to navigate, so I know it is not enticing to viewers; or unfinished looking (like my site)

I cannot really find examples outside poker on top of my head, will do if I find some.

What is the official definition of BN as per Google?

[The Poker Jerk]

The first thing I do is look at the content. Would I want to read it? Does it look like it was purchased from some kid in India who is copying from pirated e-books? If so, then no, I'm not interested.

It's tough, because I am trying to get some good sites to swap blogrolls with. A lot of people offer, but it's almost always sites like these.

[mupha]

For me it also has to be content as the core of the site assessment. BN sites focus on quantity over quality and tend to consist of duplicate, spinning, feed aggregation or scraped content. Those are usually pretty easy to spot.

[kingcobra]

I'm glad you started this thread as it's an interesting topic.

I've hung around the hood and some may say I even live there so I'll give you my take in contrast to yours I guess

Webmasters have the right to link to wherever they please as it's a personal thing but aside from that what we are to believe about search engines' preferences must be based upon evidence and not just some sort of wild conjecture or rumor.

I base my findings on actual sites and look at more than a few of them when I am looking to get information on this stuff. With all due respect if you're saying that your list of things is something that can get you in trouble for linking to that's pure nonsense.

My best links are on pages that clearly to any human being are up there exclusively for third party link exchanges. They build them with some backlinks for the PR then they are used as the dummy in a bridge game. They got the PR, they keep it, they share it, and it's not only all good but all great. The 3 way PR craze is alive and well and the biggest tool by far in site promotion these days, taking over the crown from link buying and selling which has been pooh poohed for attempting to infringe on search engines' monopoly on paid links and advertising.

I've checked out many sites with hundreds of link pages with almost all unrelated and there's no harm in this whatsoever to the site itself and certainly no harm to your linking to it or having a link there. In fact if done properly it's beneficial. I learned a lot from a guy with a LOT of PR6 pages and irrelevant links is his middle name. It's actually very hard to go wrong here although I've seen some hideous link pages with thousands of links on a single page, all just URL's, and while that's not the best way to go there's no harm in being on there or linking to it either. The webmaster isn't really helping himself here but that's his business, and it's just a matter of not getting the help he could get, not a matter of it hurting him.

I'm not at all sure what you mean by grey hat but in my mind that's the best hat anyone could wear. You know where the line is and don't cross it. It's a lot like the Price is Right, you want to come as close to the actual retail price without going over This is a business after all not the glee club

Now you asked when Google starts penalizing. I know where the line is partly because I've crossed it to find out There's some black hat stuff you definitely want to avoid, although in looking at a site you may or may not be able to tell. Hidden text is one of them and I've tried several variants of this to find one that wasn't penalized and didn't find any You could get away with some of this stuff in the old days but not now. Yahoo in fact really didn't like me losing this when I got rid of this for the last time and as far as I know they still might not care but it's Google I'm out to impress here and they have spoken.

Linking to php based link schemes is another one and yep done that and got slapped for it but that was in the real old days. It did take me a long time to get their link back off the index and that really helped me to say the least. Don't ever do any of this boys and girls

Overblown KW stuffing is another thing and you really have to manage your percentages and keep the language natural. They detect the unnatural stuff pretty well these days but there was a time where you could get away with this, and not being shy I did, but those days are long gone. When you get rid of stuff and get a big boost then you know you've done wrong

Cloaking is another thing that will get you in trouble but that never worked and thus I never tried it. Only a fool would do this really.

Linking to and from penalized sites is another thing, although I really don't put much weight on this and who the hell has the time to check this anyway. Some people will only link to PR1 or better sites to avoid this and I used to think that way for a time but now I don't care and I'm no worse for the wear for sure.

Once again and I know we had this discussion before, you don't want to be too closed minded here and sites can deal with a lot of different themes, and even hundreds really, and relevence is always about KW fit and such, so you do want to keep this in mind. As I've said though I've got pages dealing with a lot of different topics and some friends have been good enough to put some content in their meta data which I've used to our mutual benefit

Google does discuss this stuff by the way and aside from their vision of an ideal world where no links are ever traded, it's this black hat stuff they really tell you to avoid although I never just take their word for it and have spilled some blood along the way but also learned some real valuable stuff as well

I checked out a "bad neighborhood" scan site and they loved the non-gambling links but hated the gambling ones and classified them all as being bad neighborhood types. So I guess I really need a lot of good neighborhood sites to offset all the bad gambling ones and I've done well there

[pokaff]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

With all due respect if you're saying that your list of things is something that can get you in trouble for linking to that's pure nonsense.

Yes, there are two different ideas in this thread:

1/ what is a BN; I hope the most senior members of this forum can tell me; which sites can get me in trouble, pls let me know

2/ with whom I link; my criteria are more strigent than BN; I also do not link to some GN.

Originally Posted by kingcobra

I'm not at all sure what you mean by grey hat but in my mind that's the best hat anyone could wear. You know where the line is and don't cross it. It's a lot like the Price is Right, you want to come as close to the actual retail price without going over This is a business after all not the glee club

Grey hat, and this is probably my definition, is something which is not currently penalized by Google, but which is against the spirit of Google's requirements; so in my mind it is just a question of time before Google catches up. It is a lot like value betting, if you know where the line is, but you do not. (it moves anyway)

Anyway KCP, thank you for your detailed answer.

[pokaff]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

Hidden text is one of them and I've tried several variants of this to find one that wasn't penalized and didn't find any You could get away with some of this stuff in the old days but not now.

Very interesting point here, so I have a question for you cobra:

if you make some links look like regular text within the text, so the link is not detectable, is it ok?

[kingcobra]

Originally Posted by pokaff

Very interesting point here, so I have a question for you cobra:

if you make some links look like regular text within the text, so the link is not detectable, is it ok?

Well first of all just to let you know while I'm certainly not one of the senior members of the forum I have been around the block

Basically the only way you know this stuff is to have the whammy put on you or see or know someone that this has happened to. You don't just want to go with whatever rumor is kicking around because it's probably just that and probably has no basis in fact. Having said that we're not talking about short term reductions in SERPs or even getting out of the rankings for a short time. This stuff is actually fairly natural when you're more aggressively promoting your site and the reason is that regardless of the promotion, adding content, links, writing articles, etc there's a baseline they have for you and when you ramp things up, to the degree you do, you could come down some. Eventually your rate of promotion becomes standard and you're fine. The stuff we're talking about here gets you in jail for quite a bit longer than this, and while you don't have to write in for re-inclusion like some people think, if you do the crime you do the time and I've spent some serious time in the joint myself

As far as your question of whether links look like regular text well my partner links on my home page are all set up like that and the main reason is I don't mind putting contextual links up but I don't want the thing to look weird with a bunch of words underlined or in a different color, and I surely don't want out traffic from these. Bots don't care though and that's who they are for, and you can have links in a different color or underlined and it's simply webmaster preference here. The reason why hidden text gets you in trouble is that you're putting KW's in for bots only and hiding it from viewers which the bots don't think is cool and for good reason I guess

Thanks for your grey hat definition. The thing is though is that pretty much anything that works is grey hat. For instance link exchanges themselves have been around since search engines existed and it's ubiquitous and although link exchanges are technically grey hat under your definition (although a lot of people would disagree), backlinks are a central part of things. The focus for now is on link selling for instance and people are doing less of that although it's still huge. If I know something will get me in trouble though I won't do it and actually have never bought links.

I really doubt that anyone is pure white hat anyway and if you've ever traded links or posted a follow link somewhere you're not. Like I always say though you'll die a lonely death this way. I actually lived this life too and felt this whole promotion thing was beneath me and as it turned out getting traffic was also beneath me.

I know we disagree on pretty much everything pokeraff but I do appreciate your thoughts and it's no fun if everyone agrees

In any case what you really want to do is play the music the kids like (grey hat), not what they tell you they like but what sells, and if their tastes change (some stuff turning blacker) you just change your music a little to fit the times. Like Baretta used to say, and I'm dating myself here, "dat's the name of dat tune."

[pokaff]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

Thanks for your grey hat definition. The thing is though is that pretty much anything that works is grey hat.

ok, my mistake.

I meant brown hat. And not everyone is doing it.