What is a link farm and how are they treated by search engines?
-
I notice one of my competitors who ranks prominantly has very odd looking backlinks. They come from MANY sites which all contain directories that look identical. Each site contains the exact same directory - only the design of the page is different. There is no theme or focus to the directories - they list everything from pencils to fencing. This competitor has very few links from outside of this directory but again it has MANY links from this directory. So my question is, does this qualify as a "link farm". And then, how do search engines treat "link farms?
-
Thanks, Barry! That last paragraph is rich and very helpful. Google won't likely look at an individual case like this because they are trying to fix this kind of problem by tweaking algorithms... Makes perfect sense. I'll likely make the report but set my expectation levels low.
Thanks to everyone for the great, quick feedback on my question!
-
If it is those sites that are being used to rank then you either level the playing field by getting on them, remove him from the sites or remove the sites!
Sticking in a spam report can't hurt.
And Blekko's probably discounted those sites as spam, they're quite good that way
When dealing with spammy competitors your options are limited, spam report or if you have a following you could blog about it and hope it gets in front of somebody in a position to make changes.
Realistically this sort of linking is the kind of thing Google wants to sort algorithmically, so won't see an immediate beat down on your competitor by reporting it; not sure what other options you have though
-
Thanks, Barry. Exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. : )
But seriously, is my only option submitting a spam report or are there other options? How do you all deal with competitors who use spammy tactics?
I notice Blekko doesn't rank this competitors site well at all. Actually, Blekko serps look like I'd expect them to if spammy tactics were treated as spammy tactics should be treated. Super clean serps (at least in my niche).
Anyway, any additional advice would be appreciated!
Thanks!
-
Or get on there too...
-
I first noticed these links about 6 months ago but I've watched this competitors site climb quickly over the last 12 months and I'm assuming they've had these links over 6 months. I had been advised that if these links were spammy Google would catch on and any benefit they had been getting would diminish. But as I said, it's been quite some time and they continue to hold their strong organic positions which is obviously a concern. So... what do you all suggest I do? Is it time to submit a spam report?
-
That's not a link farm
You just described a free directory
-
Technically a link farm is a group of sites that link to all the other sites in the farm. So A links to B & C, B links to A & C and C links to A & B.
Scale that up to 100 sites and you can kind of see what's going on.
Here's the Whiteboard Friday on it - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-link-farming
What you're describing may be a form of link farming, if your competitor has a link back to each of those directories. If not then it's just a ****ty directory and probably not doing a lot for him or won't be doing a lot in the very near future
You could submit a spam report to Google, but probably not going to get dealt with straight away.
-
A link farm is one that gives any website a link for free. Its also called a FFA or free for all. No creteris is needed to list a website in such websites.
Link farms are considered a black hat technique in terms of Google.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Sitewide links
Hi there, We operate about a dozen websites that are part of the same parent company. All these websites are in the same vertical, and link among each other in the footer section. The anchor for each link is the brand name, so we are merely doing it to show what other products the parent company has to offer. My question is: do you think this is still advisable, or it might trigger a penalty? Also, what would you choose between: Sitewide footer links from each site to the other sites. A single footer link on the homepage from each site to the other sites. A presentation page on each website, one click away from the homepage, which presents the company's other websites. Thanks.
Link Building | | propertyshark0 -
Internal Links - First Link Rule Confusion
Hello All - I would like to create a guide for my team of rules for internal links and I could use some help. My understanding is that Google only counts the first link to a page, so any crafted keyword text links within the content do not count if the page in question is linked to from the main navigation. Is this correct? For example, if the menu or drop down menu in main site nav (which exists on all pages of the site) includes a link to a particular section that will be the only one that ever counts since the menu is on every page? Example: let's say a website selling cat toys includes a drop down menu on the homepage with links to "holiday cat toys". Does this mean that no other text links in content on the site will support that page from an SEO perspective since the link is in the main nav and will always be the first one counted? In the past we have added text links in the content on the homepage to important pages on the site. It seems to work, though now I'm questing these tactics based on the first link rule. I would appreciate some advice, clarification, thoughts, etc. Thanks!
Link Building | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Getting Links
Hi, Links from Directories are bad. Links for low quality sites are bad. Paid links are bad. Guest blogging is "maybe rumor has it" google's next big Penguin. Where and how is everybody getting all these great links from, is there anywhere left?? All advice welcomed as we really need good links quick! Thanks
Link Building | | Studio330 -
Link Relevance vs Link Authority ?
Hi guys, I have a quick question regarding some low quality links my site is getting. From the information in Open Site Explorer, the website Im talking about has a page authority of 16 while the domain authority is 11\. These are very low quality scores in my oppinion and Im thinking of removing them with Google Disavow Tool. The thing is that, although the domain is low quality, the links have relevance as they're in the same business sector as us. More exactly, the name of the domain is taxisavona and the company I work for is also a taxi company. So, now I`m thinking, should I disavow the link because of it's low scores or should I leave it because it is relevant to our business ? Thank you in advance! Best regards, Tiberiu Iavorenciuc
Link Building | | Tiberiu0 -
Rankings Drop Across Search Engines
Hello! I know this may sound a bit weird, but has anyone experienced any search engine rankings drop after Penguin on Bing and Yahoo as well? I am trying to locate the issue with one website I am doing optimization on and it has ranked lower on some keywords on all three search engines, directing me to suspect there's an issue with the site itself. Thanks!
Link Building | | Njave_MCP0 -
Total Links vs Google Webmaster Site Links
I am interested why the numbers between SEOmoz and Google are so different. In SEOmoz we only show 17,000ish links from 190ish domains. In Google, we show 200,000+ links from 370 domains. Why is there such a dramatic difference?
Link Building | | webspecdesign0 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
SEO Tool to search mass URLs (for link qualification)
Hi, I have been using OSE and have a compiled list of backlinks to my competitor's sites. The next step would be to go through and qualify all of these links for a link opportunities for my client's site. To save me a lot of time, I require a tool that will search all of these pages (say 1000) for specific keywords in tags or body content. A search query might be - site:(URL list) intitle:directory site:(URL list) "add site" etc Any ideas would be great. Thanks.
Link Building | | DigitalLeaf0