ABC Link Trades - What the?

[fastrealestate]

We have been getting quite a few ABC link trade requests, as a rule I don't take them. Why? I think a 3 way link pattern leaves a foot print that the SE's can and will detect so why even take the risk. It is a very clear signal that your trying to game the system and might just earn you a nasty penalty. A link is a vote and once you get your head around that then you need to consider who you vote for and who is voting for you, the engines consider both sides of the equation. I am going to look harder at our linking stratgey after the recent changes google has made - Links are the currency of ranking well so you need to get quality sites to "vote" for you. When considering link partners go a little further than the toolbar, look at the quality of the site and think about it as an extenstion of your own site. What does a potential link partner bring to the table for your users? The whole link situation I think has moved even further towards synergy / quality.

[Jason Painter]

If I understand this correctly, its kind of like this, say you own two different sites, A and B. You talk you friend C into doing a one way link exchange to your site A and you in turn give him one from site B. I can see no way that this would be anything other than a positive trade. How would the search engines know any of this was related if they even cared?

C gives one way link to A

B in return gives one way link to C

I just I don't understand where there would be any way to detect this, less yet penalize for it. I'm no expert though, anyone else have any opinions?

[Eric Blackwell]

Fast;

I am in agreement with you.

Yes, it DOES in fact leave a "footprint". If you did only one, it might not leave much of a footprint, but in any appreciable quantity, it would. B has to get it's link love from somewhere...it isn't going to just be the donor otherwise its authority gets diluted... and three ways become detectable pretty readily IMO.

Best;

Eric

[Jason Painter]

B has to get it's link love from somewhere...

I was thinking that if you were the owner of site A and B you would just flip flop the giving and receiving with your next link partner.

[judyo]

Jason, I have more than 2 sites so I can really get creative. However, Matt Cutts has demonstrated with his laptop that he can easily find 3-way links. I don't understand how but I guess if you do it enough a footprint is created.

[Jason Painter]

This is just a guess, but I think the link exchange I was describing is a little different than this scenario, which most folks think of as an ABC link trade:

A links to B, B links to C, and C links back to A. Now in this case it is kind of like a webring or whatever, I can see this one getting found quite easily.

I still think the way I pointed out earlier would be hard to find but I'm not an expert.

[36towns]

I have an algo of 15 website network, linking to each other without any "footprints". Each having 4 outbounds and 4 inbounds. figure that one out

[MillerREALTOR]

I don't think it matters you use a blog and you write an article and link it to your site but from your home page they can reach your blog, so what does it matter really.

Reciprocal links work from what I can tell there is a lady that ranks #1 for a local lake and all she has is a bunch of Reciprocal links from other agents website.

What's the problem with say a page in your site and call it Real Estate by state and have Reciprocal links with 50 REW sites from each state.

[judyo]

Barry, check out the dates on the threads you're replying to. This is an old thread you brought up, 2007.

[zcoplan]

Matt cutts is great, but all i hear him talk about is what not to do. He is good at scaring people but I would appreciate it if he was a little more insightful. Keep in mind that he works for google and does have an agenda.