Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'links'

A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who noticed his site was spammed and he is anticipating his site to be penalized by Google, and the other search engines. He asked if he should start early and submit a reconsideration request...

Posted on November 3, 2009 9:23 AM

On Sunday, if you searched in Google for [Green Party] you would not find the official Green Party of United States web site, which is at gp.com. Even if you searched for gp.org, Google would not show you the site....

Posted on October 27, 2009 8:53 AM

Last week, we ran a poll asking if you should risk linking to competitors. The specific question we asked was, "Do You Link To Direct Competitors?" Not sure if you are surprised by the results, but after receiving 140 or...

Posted on October 22, 2009 9:02 AM

A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion on how useful the breadcrumb trail / navigation is for your SEO strategy. Most people agree that having them from a usability standpoint, makes total sense. So, for users, it makes sense. But does...

Posted on October 19, 2009 8:29 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has an interesting conversation about linking to competitors. In this case, the webmaster is considering giving his competitor a banner ad direct link (not through a redirect or nofollow) but without an alt text, in exchange for...

Posted on October 14, 2009 8:48 AM

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who runs a home construction resource complaining that his rankings tanked. After some back and forth, Googler, JohnMu came in and said: I browsed your site's reviews a bit and most of...

Posted on September 24, 2009 8:47 AM

There are hundreds of SEO tools out there, we have covered just a few. I recently saw a short thread with a person complaining his site has been removed from the Google index. In the Google Webmaster Help thread, a...

Posted on September 4, 2009 8:25 AM

A few weeks ago, we ran a poll asking Will You Remove The NoFollow Attributes From Your Pages? Why did we ask SEOs and webmasters this question? With the recent update from Google on how they handle the nofollow'ed links,...

Posted on August 13, 2009 8:22 AM

I have been tracking the WebmasterWorld thread on the July Google changes and a lot of people are now discussing how Google is treating location specific queries differently. By that I mean, the consensus in the thread is that there...

Posted on July 22, 2009 9:03 AM

With the latest on how Google handles the nofollow attribute, I know of many webmasters who are removing them completely from their sites. Instead, they are either not linking out or linking out without the nofollow attribute added to the...

Posted on July 21, 2009 9:03 AM

Earlier this month, we polled our readers asking how addicted are you to links. Well, we have about a 150 responses now, and it shows that not all SEOs are addicted to links. 32% said they hate links, while 21%...

Posted on July 17, 2009 8:56 AM

Link exchanges: The poor man's SEO from CNET discusses the pros and cons of link exchanges. The article isn't bad, overall. What I personally find funny is that CNET quoted Evan Duffield after Evan emailed CNET with a link exchange...

Posted on July 15, 2009 8:42 AM

Earlier this month, we polled our audience asking how important is DMOZ to your SEO strategy? As expected, most SEOs take the philosophy of "submit it and forget it." Why? Simply because to many SEOs, it is not worth them...

Posted on July 14, 2009 9:10 AM

Every industry has their addiction. Wall Street is known for their speed addiction, Hollywood for, well - can't list them all and so on. The SEO industry may have an addition to link acquisitions, mostly Google's fault :). In any...

Posted on July 6, 2009 8:53 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has new conversation on branded links. By that, he means, getting links to your web site for your brand name. For example, if you link to this site with the anchor text Search Engine Roundtable over something...

Posted on June 30, 2009 8:33 AM

Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal has a nice short piece on link building worksheets. These spreadsheets help link builders keep track of their link building efforts. She links to three worksheets, including: Ontolo's worksheetKalena's blog postYour SEO Plan In...

Posted on June 24, 2009 9:02 AM

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, created a thread at WebmasterWorld on the topic of "stingy links." In short, he said he was watching to a presentation by a Microsoft engineer about improving the SALSA algorithm for link structure analysis - and I...

Posted on June 23, 2009 8:39 AM

I found a fun thread at HighRankings Forums that discusses what he calls "unintentional reciprocal links." What I find funny about that name is that, if you think about it, an unintentional reciprocal link, but definition, is a natural link....

Posted on June 11, 2009 8:39 AM

Yesterday we covered the news that SEOs are wasting PageRank by using the nofollow to sculpt their PageRank. In short, if you had 10 links on a page, and nofollowed 5 of them, the 5 that are followed only get...

Posted on June 4, 2009 9:48 AM

Last night at SMX Advanced Matt Cutts of Google reportedly dropped a bombshell on the SEO community when he said that using the nofollow to PageRank sculpt might not work like you (SEOs) thought. Danny Sullivan explained it well: If...

Posted on June 3, 2009 8:55 AM

There is an excellent thread at WebmasterWorld on the topic of web directories. Moderator, incrediBILL, runs directories and he goes off on how many of the submissions are not able writing your titles and descriptions to be click worthy, but...

Posted on May 21, 2009 8:24 AM

On Thursday we reported that the backlink data was out of sync in the redesigned webmaster tools. Well, over the weekend, that was fixed. Googler, Jonathan Simon said in a Google Webmasters Help thread that it is now up to...

Posted on May 18, 2009 1:38 PM

The other day, Google released a redesigned Webmaster Tools area. Soon after it was released, webmasters began noticing that the linkage data found in the new Webmaster Tools was out of sync with the one found in the old Webmaster...

Posted on May 14, 2009 8:28 AM

The topic of link building is a very popular subject here. One recent WebmasterWorld thread asks how can one create a value proposition compelling enough to encourage someone to link to their web site via an email request? The webmaster...

Posted on May 12, 2009 8:19 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does a link pass link juice after the link was removed from the web page? For example, a web page has a link to your page and then that link is either removed or...

Posted on May 11, 2009 8:02 AM

There are rumors that the incredibly popular magazine and website, Consumer Reports is sending out link exchange requests to webmasters and SEOs. A WebmasterWorld thread has a Senior Member, MichaelBluejay, saying that he has received, what he considers, deceptive emails...

Posted on May 6, 2009 8:45 AM

I ran a poll a couple weeks ago asking, do you use interns as link builders? The 120 plus responses are in and most of those who responded said yes, they use interns as link builders. 74 of the 120...

Posted on May 1, 2009 8:20 AM

For over three years now, I and others (including Danny) have been trying to get information from Google on how they handle passing link value from domain names, specifically in cases of expired domains and domain name transfer of ownership....

Posted on April 21, 2009 9:17 AM

The summer is coming up and that means there are plenty of college and high school students looking for a couple months of work. Typically, you can hire these college or high school students at extremely low rates. It is...

Posted on April 20, 2009 8:19 AM

We recently wrote about getting PageRank without getting links, it turned out to be a fairly popular thread we covered. In any event, Brett Tabke started a timely post on that at WebmasterWorld. He named the post, Hot Top 20...

Posted on April 17, 2009 8:52 AM

A week ago, we ran a poll asking when is the best time to send out link requests. We know, we don't recommend bombarding people with link exchange or request emails, but if you had to, when would you do...

Posted on April 15, 2009 7:41 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of link building. This link building topic is different then the average thread. In this thread, the member asks if there was link building before Google became popular. The link building market,...

Posted on April 9, 2009 7:33 AM

A few weeks ago, we wrote a story on how e-commerce sites can build links through offering customers a discount on orders, if they link back to the site. It is a neat way to get links but we wanted...

Posted on April 9, 2009 7:32 AM

The topic of link requests is not new to this site. We covered it many times. Personally, I mark all link exchange or link requests emails as spam - I simply don't play that game. Not that I think it...

Posted on April 7, 2009 8:20 AM

A HighRankings Forum thread asks how does one distinguish between a good and bad web directory. Web directories are often the first step for many link building campaigns. The obvious directories that come to mind to submit to are dmoz.org...

Posted on March 26, 2009 5:10 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the topics of building links from foreign web sites, in different languages. For example, if I run a web site that is in English, focused for US users - what happens if I get...

Posted on March 25, 2009 7:01 AM

There is an excellent WebmasterWorld on the topic of getting a "second tier link," as opposed to the link you really want. Wheel, the moderator of the forum, posted that it is not always easy or possible to get the...

Posted on March 20, 2009 8:31 AM

One of the most challenging jobs for e-commerce sites is to get people to link to them. Over the years, we have posted many link building tips but we never posted about this one. Why don't e-commerce sites offer a...

Posted on March 19, 2009 8:35 AM

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the Australian communications regulator said you can be fined $11,000 per day for linking to sites that are on their banned list. This is going to begin shortly, even though there is a lot of...

Posted on March 17, 2009 8:51 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has tips from senior member wheel on how to get links from .edu pages, even when they might not be .edu pages. Wheel said that many professors have web sites that might not be on an edu...

Posted on March 16, 2009 8:50 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks an interesting question. If you have a space in the nofollow link attribute, does Google consider it the same as having no space? Let me explain. A standard syntax for the nofollow attribute looks like this:...

Posted on March 13, 2009 8:43 AM

The other day, we polled our audience, asking should URL shortening services pass link value? We now have 168 responses and I thought I share them with you. The response was overwhelming yes. 75% of the respondents said, these URL...

Posted on March 12, 2009 8:44 AM

A Sphinn thread has discussion around a "quick" study done to test if URL shortening services like TinyURL and others pass any link value. Clearly, all the time you and I spend on services like Twitter, makes this question something...

Posted on March 3, 2009 8:55 AM

A week ago today, we reported that some webmasters noticed the link reports in Google Webmaster Tools was not being updated or was not allowing for download. On the 19th, Google said in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that...

Posted on February 25, 2009 8:27 AM

I am a paid supporter of WebmasterWorld and to be honest, I don't often use the paid only rooms. But for the thread I am about to discuss, I can tell you, the small fee I paid to have access...

Posted on February 23, 2009 8:44 AM

SEOs and Webmasters should all be huge fans of Google Webmaster Tools, it provides data and insight into our web sites that we did not always have. SEOs and Webmasters that are educated know what to make from these reports...

Posted on February 18, 2009 8:28 AM

Marie Claire wrote at David Harry's blog a technical piece named Hunting for paid links; a technical review. In that piece, he goes through some of the ways a search engine may detect paid links. As many of you know,...

Posted on February 9, 2009 8:14 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that folks are noticing that Yahoo Site Explorer has updated the link counts for the tool. I do not typically track these numbers, but many do. So if you do, definitely take a look and...

Posted on January 9, 2009 8:25 AM

An article at E-Commerce Times talks about a recently-filed lawsuit against Boston.com, a NYTimes company, that is being sued for its linking practices. According to the article, the simple presence of a link has prompted the suit, but from CenterNetworks,...

Posted on December 30, 2008 9:55 AM

Senior WebmasterWorld member, Wheel, posted a WebmasterWorld thread explaining how now, the holiday season, is a great time to get quality links. How should you go about it? Well, people love to give now. It is really the season of...

Posted on December 24, 2008 8:08 AM

A couple weeks ago, we ran a poll asking SEOs and link builders where they would prefer their external links show up on a page. Well, the results are in and as expected, most SEOs would like that link in...

Posted on December 23, 2008 7:46 AM

A Google Webmaster Help thread asks, can Google read links in Flash files or JavaScript? The simple answer is yes, they can. But it is not that simple. Some people want to know the answer to this question because they...

Posted on December 19, 2008 7:52 AM

I think I am missing something, but a bunch of well known members at WebmasterWorld are participating in a thread named "Where do you want your link?" The thread asks, where in a specific page's layout, would you optimally want...

Posted on December 11, 2008 8:10 AM

In our continued coverage of the a WebmasterWorld thread started by senior member CainIV, we learn two more things. These two items are likely obvious to most, but have been confirmed (at least to CainIV) that they are true based...

Posted on December 10, 2008 8:44 AM

A Google Webmaster Help thread shares a sad story of one person who built up a site on a members.aol.com hosted service. Recently shut down their AOL Hometown, which is the host space for these sites and this person's site...

Posted on December 8, 2008 8:27 AM

About a month ago, we reported Google Blog Search Link Command Now Scanning Blogroll Links. In short, using a link:www.seroundtable.com would not only return links from the content of the article, but also return links from the navigational elements. So...

Posted on December 3, 2008 8:06 AM

Senior WebmasterWorld member, CainIV, has been running an experiment for just about two months now. The experiment is to test to see how changing your navigation links from "home," to a keyword, to another keyword, can impact your rankings. Yes,...

Posted on December 1, 2008 8:05 AM

I've been in the "SEO industry" for a long time, relative to the industry. Over time, the industry and the perception both externally and internally, has changed. I guess that happens with all industries, but quicker in more evolving and...

Posted on November 25, 2008 7:44 AM

I often try to stay away from talking about all these heated link debates, but sometimes, the discussion around these debates are so important to our industry, that I find myself having no other choice to write about them. That...

Posted on November 20, 2008 8:29 AM

Russ Jones over at The Google Cache talks about a new tool he released for public consumption. It's called glync and gives you historical data of links you have accrued over time using Google Webmaster Tools. There is a free...

Posted on November 6, 2008 9:27 AM

Every week day, I put together, what I call the Daily Link Find on my personal blog. It basically is a summary of links to my blog posts I find for the day. I find most, if not all, the...

Posted on November 5, 2008 7:53 AM

A Google Groups thread discusses a classic SEO challenge, passing link popularity for tracking URLs. Honestly, I cannot sum up the issue better than the original poster: Our site uses query string variables in our URL's to track traffic and...

Posted on October 30, 2008 8:29 AM

There has always been this myth that Google and other search engines cannot crawl or process more than 100 links on a single web page or document. That truth is that Google and other search engines can and do crawl...

Posted on October 29, 2008 7:51 AM

Few noticed last week that Google seemed to have had a broken link on its homepage. The link "Advertising Programs" was bringing a 404, I believe: I, too, didn't notice, but DigitalPoint Forums members were not the only people who...

Posted on October 27, 2008 9:32 AM

A typical thread I see from time to time in the forums are from webmasters who see Googlebot trying to access their site, but their site is not publicly available. For example, a Google Groups thread has a webmaster from...

Posted on October 20, 2008 8:24 AM

We all know about Google's latest change to the webmaster guidelines, where they removed directories as a good source of links. Having seen that, SEOs and webmasters ask themselves, if seeking links from directories is worth it anymore. A WebmasterWorld...

Posted on October 13, 2008 10:28 AM

I often try to stay away from covering tools but in this case, a Sphinn thread with over 70 votes and 35 comments, I cannot pass this up. SEOmoz launched a new tool called Linkscape, the tool utilizes a growing...

Posted on October 7, 2008 7:17 AM

Yahoo Site Explorer seems to have pushed out their beta design to everyone now. The new look, is not just visual, it also contains these new data points: + Site URL + Number of pages known + Number of pages...

Posted on October 3, 2008 8:41 AM

Last night, Google update their Webmaster Guidelines to remove a single line that reads: Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites. In fact, I was...

Posted on October 3, 2008 8:20 AM

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld discussing an updated Google patent named Information retrieval based on historical data. This is one of the more popular Google documents over the years, where much of the Sandbox theories came from....

Posted on September 19, 2008 7:59 AM

Buy links, trade links, sell links, request links, links, links, links - what does an SEO or webmaster do? You can't live without them, you can't live with them. A WebmasterWorld thread has a fun thread that somewhat sums up...

Posted on September 18, 2008 8:00 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Yahoo Site Explorer has done a major update to their linkage data reports. Most webmasters are reporting huge drops in the number of links reported today versus the days before. The linkage drops are...

Posted on September 3, 2008 8:24 AM

Back in the day when reciprocal linking was useful, some webmasters were trigger happy and aimed to link to everything that would link back, even if there was no relevancy from site to site. Over the past few years, many...

Posted on August 25, 2008 9:28 AM

A question I get quiet often is, my site has been penalized, and I want to know if I will have to start from scratch, to earn Google's trust back? I often say that I doubt you have to start...

Posted on August 22, 2008 9:01 AM

You and I see it all the time, webmasters or link builders emailing link exchange offers or posting comments or threads with link exchange offers. But a link builder had the audacity, to post a public link exchange offer in...

Posted on August 18, 2008 7:29 AM

A week or so ago, I wrote a piece named Are Links From Blogs As Valuable These Days? In short, some SEOs are now against buying or obtaining links from most blogs. They feel that Google may be devaluing the...

Posted on August 7, 2008 8:37 AM

Recently, I have been hearing a lot of buzz on the topic of links from blogs. Some are suggesting that blog links don't have the 'oomph' they once had. Now, I suspect when these people are classifying "blogs," they mean...

Posted on July 30, 2008 8:58 AM

Google pushes out toolbar PageRank updates every 3 months or so. The most recent one was over the weekend, which helped generate some buzz. But the reality is, what Google shows as PageRank in the toolbar is way out of...

Posted on July 28, 2008 8:01 AM

A Google Groups thread has discussion around a site that was hacked and because of it, now has many broken (dead) hyper links. The question then came up, would Google penalize a site that had broken links? The simple answer...

Posted on July 24, 2008 8:05 AM

There is a newish WebmasterWorld thread that is just getting started on the topic of tips on outsourcing link building to India, South America or other countries outside of your local region. Here are the initial tips this SEO learned...

Posted on July 16, 2008 7:40 AM

Recently I have been reading and hearing a lot of webmasters complain about a huge drop in their Google traffic. There are just too many threads to reference, so I thought I reference one valuable post by JohnMu of Google....

Posted on July 15, 2008 8:01 AM

Google's sitelinks, which we have covered extensively are the little links you see under a search result in Google, typically between 4 and 8 sub-links. Here is a picture of our Sitelinks: A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about the importance...

Posted on July 10, 2008 7:49 AM

I really enjoy threads that get into the details of such small details, which in reality, can have a huge impact on your SEO efforts. The topic is which anchor text counts, the first found on the page, all found...

Posted on July 7, 2008 7:45 AM

Google has been updating the link reports in Webmaster Tools more frequently, so I stopped reporting them. But Google also removed the download this table feature from those reports back in February of this year. It was at that time,...

Posted on June 26, 2008 8:25 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if there is a way to prevent Google Bowling. Google Bowling is known as a method of using links to hurt your competitors. While Google still denies it, most SEOs believe this is possible can this...

Posted on June 20, 2008 8:07 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if Google "hates" .info or .tv domains? The answer is simply no. This question was brought up at least three times last night in the Google Webmaster Live Chat event, which I documented and not...

Posted on June 20, 2008 7:54 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if it is normal to see a downgrade in rankings soon after conducting a link building campaign. In other words, a webmaster builds links to a site that ranks average. The next few days, the webmaster...

Posted on June 19, 2008 7:57 AM

There is no doubt that Most SEOs Believe Competitors Can Hurt Your Google Rankings specifically with using link building tactics. But when the topic was raised recently at a Google Groups thread, Googler, JohnMu, pretty much denied it. Let me...

Posted on June 18, 2008 7:48 AM

Chris Boggs featured a WebmasterWorld thread when I was away. Chris focused on sharing some of the theories behind Google's trust factors. I wanted to possibly highlight this thread one more time and ask for you to chime in. We...

Posted on June 13, 2008 8:30 AM

On Thursday, we broke the news that the Yahoo Directory had no PageRank via a WebmasterWorld thread. Matt Cutts of Google quickly commented saying that the Yahoo Directory has a PageRank of 8. Matt was referring to the home page,...

Posted on June 8, 2008 3:34 PM

A couple months ago we reported on an SEOMoz post that was debated at Sphinn on the topic of which anchor text counts? Is it only the first anchor text on the page linking to a specific URL or is...

Posted on June 6, 2008 8:09 AM

Just a few weeks ago, people started noticing that the Yahoo Directory lost Google PageRank. Well, not the home page of the Yahoo Directory, but the inside directory listing pages. The pages that link to your site and, in the...

Posted on June 5, 2008 10:28 AM

A Google Groups user is afraid that his PageRank was impacted because of too many links on his homepage. Before you wonder whether there are search engine penalties, think about those links from a usability perspective. Are they helping your...

Posted on June 2, 2008 7:11 AM

A Google Groups thread has a very interesting discussion that is almost complete. The discussion takes you through the life cycle of a 301 redirect. Site owner moved from domain.com to domain.info, on a domain name sale, but wanted to...

Posted on May 27, 2008 5:56 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks members if they would consider buying a link that has a nofollow attribute appended to it. For those who don't know what the nofollow attribute is a snippet of code added to the html of...

Posted on May 27, 2008 5:55 AM

When you're a webmaster, it's important to check your analytics to ensure that everything there is looking good. You can get a good sense of where your traffic is coming from, be it search traffic or uh, porn site traffic,...

Posted on May 14, 2008 9:14 AM

A WebmasterWorld member wants confirmation if getting multiple links would cause a penalty in the SERPs. He notes that very popular sites which rank on the first page of Google have a lot of links, including those from "shady" places....

Posted on May 9, 2008 10:03 AM

A WebmasterWorld member notes that when he does a link: query for a specific domain, it shows only internal links and not external links -- but it depends on the size of the domain. This behavior is only observed on...

Posted on May 8, 2008 9:22 AM

A Google Groups thread has a long discussion on how Google defines what a link farm is or is not. I have decided to isolate a Googler's comment, because who can best define what Google feels a link farm is,...

Posted on May 7, 2008 7:55 AM

Remember when I reported that we saw Google Sitelinks in position 60? I said then that it seems Google is admitting to the minus 60 penalty: What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to...

Posted on May 5, 2008 7:58 AM

Forums have been buzzing and buzzing about the possibility of a competitor being able to hurt your Google ranking for the past few years now. We have covered this topic time and time again, just see here for some of...

Posted on May 5, 2008 7:52 AM

I was doing my forum research this morning and I spotted a HighRankings Forum thread with the title "Link Unbuilding." I love it! The new link building, for some, is link unbuilding! Here is the SEO's concern and this concern...

Posted on April 10, 2008 8:23 AM

On February 20th, I asked our readers if they thought a listing in the Open Directory Project would have a major impact on a site's Google ranking. The response was split down the middle. We only had 58 responses, which...

Posted on April 9, 2008 8:30 AM

A month ago I wrote, Google's Matt Cutts Replies to -60 Penalty Thread at Google where I summarize how Matt said some links are hurting a particular site. At that point, I decided to poll our readers and see if...

Posted on March 24, 2008 8:06 AM

Anyone who knows the Google Web Spam team well, knows that they all have a huge distaste for link manipulation. In my opinion, it is more than just a distance for some of the web spam team members, specifically Matt...

Posted on March 21, 2008 8:33 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums has reports from dozens of webmasters that their link counts in the tool are way down. Some users are reporting as much as of an 80-percent reduction in the number of links Yahoo Site Explorer is finding...

Posted on March 19, 2008 7:10 AM

SEOmoz posted results from a study he did where he concluded that only the first anchor text on a page is counted by Google as the anchor text for that link. For example, let's say you have a two links...

Posted on March 18, 2008 7:42 AM

The Google Webmaster Tools "external links" report is buggy over the weekend. The tool is not showing any backlinks anymore for, I believe, any site. For example, here are the non-existent backlinks for the Search Engine Roundtable: There are dozens...

Posted on March 17, 2008 6:32 AM

The results are in, and SEOs voted on which link they would prefer. 65% of SEOs said they would prefer an old and aged link over a fresh and new link. 35% said they want the newer fresh links over...

Posted on March 11, 2008 7:50 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread touches on a simple topic, the topic of link pages. Many sites have them, a page that contains links to link partners. Some of these pages are labeled "resources," some are labelled "partners," some are "directory," and...

Posted on March 4, 2008 7:57 AM

Mid January I asked An image link is worth what percentage less than a text link? The question was probably not clear enough and I honestly don't blame the respondents. It is a hard question to answer, because there are...

Posted on March 3, 2008 8:21 AM

We reported several days ago that Google hasn't updated their external link counts and data in Google Webmaster Tools since early January. Webmasters and SEOs began to complain so Googlers began looking into it. We now have reports via Google...

Posted on February 28, 2008 9:24 AM

Taking you back to the -60 thread I blogged about earlier. The thread is at Google Groups and it shows us a little of something that may be obvious but should be spoken about. Once you are penalized in Google...

Posted on February 27, 2008 9:34 AM

A Google Groups thread on the -60 penalty at Google (there are so many of these now, -6, -10, -250, etc) now has several responses from Matt Cutts of Google. Matt replies specifically to the nature of the posters site...

Posted on February 25, 2008 7:32 AM

A WebmasterWorld member has been contacted by Google about presenting a story about how Google AdWords has worked for him. If all goes well, Google will interview him and write up a nice article which would ultimately need his approval...

Posted on February 21, 2008 9:31 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has a Webmaster saying that a site of his recently was removed from the ODP. He said, soon after he noticed his rankings drop in Google. He wants to know if it can be related to the...

Posted on February 20, 2008 7:53 AM

Eric Lander wrote a piece at Search Engine Journal named NoFollow: An SEO Red Flag? which sparked some interesting debate over in a Sphinn thread. The question at hand is, does using a nofollow attribute on many of your links...

Posted on February 12, 2008 7:59 AM

Yahoo Answers allowed registered users to post links as answers but since yesterday, those links have not been clickable. Webmasters at both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld have been complaining about the issue since 4am (EST) yesterday. But it appears that...

Posted on February 8, 2008 2:25 AM

If you login to Google Webmaster Tools and go to your "links" and then "external links" section, you may notice Google removed the "Download This Table" link from the bottom. What remains is the "Download all external links." Why did...

Posted on February 8, 2008 2:19 AM

Branko at SEO Scientist wrote an excellent post named Tapping into Unconventional Link Attributes. The post was so good, it made the hot list at Sphinn over the weekend. Since I am out on vacation, I'll do a quick quick...

Posted on February 4, 2008 3:19 AM

A HighRankings Forum member wants to know if it's possible to rank well for competitive keywords without having inbound links. The answer is no. As Randy points out: Without any links at all pointing towards your site not only will...

Posted on January 31, 2008 9:37 AM

Googler, JohnMu, wrote in a Google Groups thread that links from EDU domains are not in itself better links than .com or .net links. John said: In general, I would like to add that no, backlinks from .EDU domains generally...

Posted on January 29, 2008 7:41 AM

What would you do if you saw hundreds of links on a website, with much of those being in the footer? Is that a natural surfing experience? Would Google penalize you for these links? The penalty might not be the...

Posted on January 25, 2008 9:44 AM

What happens if you link to the same page twice on one page with different anchor text? Does Google devalue the link at all? This question is asked on Cre8asite Forums. I have 2 identical links on same page but...

Posted on January 24, 2008 9:52 AM

Let's say you wanted to be altruistic and provide a link to a site in hopes to raise awareness about a program that they promote. But when you alert the webmaster of said site, they go on a hissy fit...

Posted on January 22, 2008 9:10 AM

Here is an unusual scenario for you. You have a web page, the web page is one page of many on your site. This specific page does not allow search engines to crawl them by using a robots.txt file to...

Posted on January 22, 2008 7:35 AM

A SitePoint Forums thread asks, as links get older, to they loose their power? Here is the exact question: This is something I have noticed couple of times in the past - it "feels" that old backlinks expire or loose...

Posted on January 21, 2008 7:32 AM

A short WebmasterWorld thread asks if links from logos or images give off any link popularity amongst the search engines. WebmasterWorld Link Development moderator, pageoneresults, replies that although text links are preferred, "you are getting the next best thing which...

Posted on January 18, 2008 7:51 AM

Ever since Google downgraded the visible PageRank scores seen in the Google Toolbar for sites that do not use the nofollow on their ads, people have been wondering how it has been impacting the Google search results and algorithm. Most...

Posted on January 2, 2008 7:20 AM

Getting the Most out Of Your Anchor Text: It’s not as Simple as you Think from Slightly Shady SEO goes through how one should vary their anchor text used in their link building campaigns. As described in the blog post,...

Posted on December 18, 2007 7:49 AM

Joost de Valk has released a Firefox extension that provides data from Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Microsoft Webmaster Central. By combining all three great resources, Joost has created a pretty awesome link analysis Firefox extension. Here's a...

Posted on December 13, 2007 8:52 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long might it take for a search engine to discover new links and then have those new links impact your search results. For example, let's say you write an awesome article and you get 50...

Posted on December 11, 2007 7:07 AM

Matt Cutts recently spoke with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and made a few interesting statements that elicited some interesting forum response. First, WebmasterWorld members were particularly interested in this statement: we did do a full PageRank update several weeks ago...

Posted on December 3, 2007 8:55 AM

This weekend has been a landmark time in the SEO industry. To huge blog posts, with dozens of policy changes over the past couple of weeks, have been instrumental in what makes this weekend so significant. The official Google Webmaster...

Posted on December 3, 2007 7:49 AM

With all the debate and discussion around paid links these days, some DigitalPoint Forums members are wondering how Google can get away with selling links that are not nofollowed. That is right, if you want a PageRank 7 link directly...

Posted on November 29, 2007 7:13 AM

There is no doubt that link builders love to get links from sites on edu TLDs. But those are not always that easy to obtain. We have covered the topic several times here, including: Finding Some of Your EDU Links...

Posted on November 27, 2007 7:53 AM

A High Rankings Forums member wonders if there's a way to check how many links are on Wikipedia. A few people say yes, you can. Some possible methods of exploration include the linkdomain:yoursite.com site:wikipedia.org or Google Webmaster Tools. But Barry,...

Posted on November 16, 2007 9:55 AM

After all the recent Google PageRank news and "penalties," the big question is, are SEOs still buying links? A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a poll, that is asking that question. They break the poll down into four possible answers. Here...

Posted on November 14, 2007 6:59 AM

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update earlier this week. Google typically does these updates monthly, around this time. There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums. Here is a look at our top pages, by links reported...

Posted on November 6, 2007 1:27 PM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Google has also done a backlink update recently. Now, I think most people in this forum thread are talking about the link:www.domain.com command when searched at Google.com. That backlink command is known to just...

Posted on November 1, 2007 6:58 AM

Selling links? Matt Cutts has told Loren at Search Engine Journal that it was buying and selling links that ended up getting your PageRank lowered over the past few days. The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a...

Posted on October 30, 2007 10:24 AM

The largest topic by far this week in the forums is the PageRank update that hit sites that are selling links. There are literally dozens upon dozens of threads at many of the webmaster forums on the topic. We covered...

Posted on October 30, 2007 7:37 AM

Yesterday we reported about a 2nd Google PageRank in October 2007 which turned out to be a message from Google, at least most of us think so. At Search Engine Land I wrote in Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid...

Posted on October 25, 2007 7:27 AM

We recently had the October 2007 Paid Link Debate which recapped the discussion around Danny Sullivan's Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google. But will SEOs and Webmasters stop buying links? That is the question...

Posted on October 16, 2007 6:35 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread is reporting yet another recent Google Webmaster Tools Link update. It appears Google is now updating the linkage data, not monthly, but much more frequently, over at Google Webmaster Tools. We typically track only the monthly...

Posted on October 15, 2007 7:41 AM

Yahoo Site Explorer is a wonderful tool to check your page index count and the number and source of links you have pointing to your site. But did you know that you get different results if you are logged into...

Posted on October 12, 2007 7:22 AM

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update last week. Google typically does these updates monthly, around this time. There are additional reports of and ranking changes. There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums. Here is a look...

Posted on October 8, 2007 8:11 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Yahoo Site Explorer seems to be showing less and less link data every month for some sites. Personally, I do not track my link counts in Yahoo Site Explorer. But at this moment in...

Posted on October 8, 2007 7:46 AM

Over at the Google Groups forum, yet another Googler said that bad links to your site cannot hurt you, at least for the most part. Wysz, a Googler, said in response to someone being worried that a spammy site is...

Posted on October 3, 2007 8:21 AM

When I covered the You&A With Matt Cutts at SMX Seattle, I was only liveblogging - there was no video. But now, here's a video that confirms that Matt Cutts has said about link buying: As you can tell, Matt...

Posted on August 16, 2007 9:39 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if Google counts the links from YouTube videos. The simple answer is no. If you look at a YouTube video that has a link in the description field, you will notice that in the code...

Posted on August 7, 2007 7:24 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread says that Google has counted links from within Microsoft Word Documents, as links to a page. We all know Google indexes files like Word Documents, PDFs, and many many other types of documents. We also know you...

Posted on August 3, 2007 7:45 AM

EGOL started a thread at Cre8asite Forums asking how using the various robots.txt command or META noindex nofollow commands will impact the flow of PageRank and link popularity. Several members go through some detailed examples and what-if scenarios. However, Ammon...

Posted on July 31, 2007 7:29 AM

A Cre8asite Forums thread asks why is this person's private Facebook profile listed in the Google index? In this case, Google really did not fully index this person's profile. They just crawled a link to this person's Facebook profile, but...

Posted on July 26, 2007 7:32 AM

Let's say that when you first built your site, you relied heavily on directories to get your name out. You've also built good content and get linked to every so often. You're now complacent with your rankings primarily because you're...

Posted on July 19, 2007 9:43 AM

Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update over the weekend. The last about was about a month ago. There is currently discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld. Here is a look at our top pages, by links...

Posted on July 16, 2007 7:39 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread is having a debate over the topic of link exchanges. There are those that believe link exchanges help improve your rankings in the search results, then there are those that believe they do not help. Tedster quotes...

Posted on July 12, 2007 7:59 AM

In Google's Webmaster Guidelines they write: If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages. The 100 link per page concern has been a concern in the...

Posted on July 10, 2007 7:04 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses the implementation of 301 redirects on a newly constructed site. WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, adds to the discussion that he has seen that a chain of 301 redirects does not always pass the link popularity along. For...

Posted on July 9, 2007 7:29 AM

There has always been this perception that links from domains with a .EDU TLD is better than links from .COM, .NET, .ORG and so on. Chris Boggs covered the debate with Are Links From .edu and .gov Domains Really "Better?"...

Posted on July 2, 2007 7:05 AM

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has discussion about a service one member was offered. In short, the service is composed of two offerings: (1) Damage your competitor's search engine rankings (2) Protect your own search engine rankings They use...

Posted on June 27, 2007 6:57 AM

Yahoo's site explorer tool is a great tool to check your links as well as competitor links. A WebmasterWorld notes something fairly clear to most users of the tool, that Yahoo! seems to order the links in order of some...

Posted on June 14, 2007 7:25 AM

With Google's updated Webmaster Guidelines which have been added to the Google Webmaster Help Center, Google has officially acknowledged statements made by Matt Cutts on paid links. Some of the findings have been outlined in a WebmasterWorld thread. Google works...

Posted on June 7, 2007 9:29 AM

We asked the question in the past, Can an Email Address Be Counted as a Back Link? Well, maybe the answer is yes. I was looking at Excel Diamonds backlinks in Yahoo! Site Explorer for fun and found that Yahoo!...

Posted on June 1, 2007 5:40 PM

A WebmasterWorld thread talks about how they noticed how the Yahoo! Directory pages are showing a PageRank score that is typically lower than what they showed in the past. A member says based on that, "Looks like that $300 link...

Posted on June 1, 2007 7:22 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread revisits an old topic and debate on if SEOs should request from their clients a site credit link. You know a link that says, "services provided by Company ABC." We covered this topic in November 2006; Should...

Posted on May 8, 2007 7:57 AM

In a Cre8asite Forums post, a user asks an important question for a link building campaign: how do you get links from .edu sites? As you know, .edu sites have a higher inherent trust and as such can help boost...

Posted on May 2, 2007 8:59 AM

Ever since Google expanded Webmaster Central to include a link analysis tool, we have been collecting the raw data to analyze for later purposes. Last month, we saw some February and March link data. This month, let's look at...

Posted on April 27, 2007 2:14 PM

It is 2007 and we have yet to have the big debate on paid links this year. Matt Cutts of Google has changed that with his dual post on how to report paid links and hidden links. Let me quickly...

Posted on April 16, 2007 7:53 AM

An interesting WebmasterWorld thread discusses whether a paid run of site link (ROS) is benefital or not. The thread points out some variables that may impact how the search engines will react to the ROS link. Age of site Size...

Posted by goodroi on March 13, 2007 9:21 AM

Yesterday I reported a Google Link Update Within Webmaster Central's Link Tool but I did not dig deeper. Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central left a comment explaining that this is just an update in the number of links reported....

Posted on March 8, 2007 7:03 AM

A Cre8asite Forums thread asks "But Is The Traffic Any Good?" Meaning, is Digg or social media traffic, quality traffic? Administrator, projectphp, explains that it is a huge benefit for a site selling ads based on a CPM basis. I...

Posted on March 1, 2007 7:28 AM

Google released a Link Analysis Tool this Tuesday and the forums have had a couple days to digest the tool. I went through many of the forums and gathered all the feedback I can find in terms of suggestions to...

Posted on February 8, 2007 8:20 AM

Yahoo! Site Explorer, Yahoo!'s Webmaster tool that details your index count and link count for your pages and site, has released badges. These Yahoo! Site Explorer Badges can be placed on your site to promote how many links you have...

Posted on January 30, 2007 7:03 AM

Matt Cutts and team wrote at the Google Blog that they have minimized "the impact of many Googlebombs" by "improving our [Google's] analysis of the link structure of the web." They then go into the history of the Googlebomb and...

Posted on January 26, 2007 7:05 AM

A Cre8asite Forums thread reports that Wikipedia has added nofollow attributes to all the links within the English Wikipedia. Joost had the scoop sharing that due to the most recent SEO contest, the founder, Jimbo Wales, has ordered that the...

Posted on January 22, 2007 7:13 AM

Brett Tabke, founder of WebmasterWorld, created a thread at WebmasterWorld (1) placing the age of a domain a top five factor in Google rankings and (2) asking for hands on advice on what this exactly means. Here is Brett's post:...

Posted on January 16, 2007 10:17 AM

Last year we had our Traffic Building - Link Building for 2006 and I have spotted a thread that asks about link building strategies for 2007. The thread is at Search Engine Watch Forums where link building queen, Debra Mastaler...

Posted on January 3, 2007 7:09 AM

Cre8asite Forums moderator EGOL created an excellent thread at Cre8asite Forums saying, he has seen on a relatively small sample, that sites with an equal number of inbound links but different number of pages on the site itself makes a...

Posted on December 21, 2006 7:36 AM

A late Friday post at the Google Webmaster Central blog named Building link-based popularity sparked a ton of discussion over the weekend at WebmasterWorld. The WebmasterWorld was named "It's Official: Google Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges" by martinibuster to spark some...

Posted on December 18, 2006 7:23 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports by several members that they have recently noticed a huge increase in the reported number of links by Yahoo's Site Explorer. Reports such as from 6,000 links to 15,000 links. I am not sure if...

Posted on November 3, 2006 7:28 AM

The fifth edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. We had two special guests on this show. Matt Cutts from Google came on two discuss what he would ask a Google engineer if he was an SEO and...

Posted on October 4, 2006 1:10 PM