5 ms·

"buying links"? I'm completely new to this; would you mind explaining what the benefit is of buying links?

by palish 15y ago

a-priori 15y ago
Let's say I run a site with lots of Google juice. For the low, low price of $[big number], I'll link to your site to give you some of my Google juice.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  And if you get caught you get banned I know more than one major publication has been caught this way.
  - ZanderEarth32 15y ago
    You don't always necessarily get banned permanently, or banned at all. Google might just discount all the links they find to be bought and adjust your ranking according to your new link count minus the paid links. You can always clean up the links yourself and then submit a reconsideration request. Whether that request is accepted, that's up to Google.
    - mjwalshe 15y ago
      True but some times you do get a big slap BMW is probably the best known. And getting back can be a problem for sites with out a high profile and for ever after your on Googles watch list :-)
jeremydavid 15y ago
Historically, a large component of Google's ranking algorithm involves the number of links pointing to a website (and a number of other qualities like anchor text, unique domains, surrounding text, etc.). If my memory serves me, there are over 300 ranking factors - but links are still the most important. By buying links (undetected) you can manipulate the quality and relevancy of your website in Google's eyes and cause it to rank better than it should.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- SquareWheel 15y ago
  To add to this, the reason they can't penalize you is because then you would just buy links for your competitor. All Google can do is drop value on links when they detect malicious behavior. As such, buying links still largely results in a positive effect on your rankings. Google is starting to focus more on other factors than links though, social signals in particular are becoming a big factor.
  - davemel37 15y ago
    Didn't chrome get penalized for buying links? http://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-penalty-14543.html http://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-penalty-14543.html I think algorithmically they can only discount links from bad neighborhoods, etc... but if they catch you, they will manually penalize you. I think we are a ways away from social signals being a "big factor." While google does claim that they look at social signals, I think from a practical standpoint the only value they provide is raising a red flag when someone manipulates social signals like buying likes and plus ones. The same way google looks at a link profile of a site, they can catch a bad social profile that seems unnatural.
    - SquareWheel 15y ago
      Chrome being penalized was a bit of a special case. Google got caught (even though it wasn't directly them) and they gave a harsher punishment to themselves because they claim they hold themselves to a higher standard. The whole thing was really damage control to save their reputation, they already had a lot of scandals this year. In reality, links are almost never seen as a negative. Which is really a shame, because it makes it harder for good-guy SEO's to legitimately build links when you can just buy 10,000 on Fiverr and not worry about it. And most black-hat SEOs buy links from many players, so even if some are discounted they won't usually still come out on top. Google is getting better at it though. Recently they've been cracking down on blog networks. This is purely conjecture, but I do believe that links are on their way out as the primary signal.
ux_designer 15y ago
You pay for people, link farmers, to link back to your webpage with specific anchor text. The link farmers typically have a network of websites they can distribute this over, offering you a few hundred or thousand links back to your site with your targeted keywords. Sometimes, the link farms even have good pagerank, which makes it even better. That's the whole point of the Google backlinks - get as many links back to your site as you can, and you'll get good SEO. And if you do this, and Google detects it, they nail you.
- palish 15y ago
  So how much would it cost to "frame" someone else's website for SEO to get them unfairly banned from Google? I'd never do it; it's just an interesting question.
  - jaredmck 15y ago
    It's very unlikely. This seems to be one of the reasons google has been turning what appears to be a blind eye toward paid links - it's hard not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
  - unimpressive 15y ago
    Exactly what I was thinking. Probably not any more than it would cost the website owner, however much that is. Depending on how successful your competition is and how much money you have in the bank this could be a viable strategy. And the implications of that make me shiver a little. (Disclosure: I have no idea how much it would cost. But my hypothesis is that it would be the same as if the website owner had done it.)
    - AznHisoka 15y ago
      I think Google simply discounts the non-valuable links rather than penalizes the sites. Otherwise things like this can happen.
  - stfu 15y ago
    This is a quite realistic concern. There is a story going around from Germany were smaller online shops were the targets of link-blackmailing. If they refused to pay certain "fees" they were hit by massive amounts of destructive links, i.e. those with "sex", "viagra" or "porn" keywords. Some shops indeed refused to pay and promptly were loosing massive amounts of traffic/customers. Here is the original story, unfortunately only in German: http://www.golem.de/news/google-ranking-wie-ein-erpresser-einem-onlineshop-schadete-1202-89548.html http://www.golem.de/news/google-ranking-wie-ein-erpresser-ei...
xSwag 15y ago
>buying links People who have a high PR website may sell a link (usually in the footer, on all pages) to websites in a similar niche to help them rank better. However, for some people its not blackhat enough. Spammers nowadays tend to use automated software like the following: -xrumer - Developed by a few russian people and primarily used by russian pharmacies for fraud, this is the most powerful "spammer" too out there. You can literally spend $1k and get 1million backlinks within a matter of days and have your site in the #1 position for whatever keyword you're aiming for. -scrapebox - Similar to xrumer, but while xrumer targets forums (vbulletin etc), scrapebox specializes in harvesting large lists of wordpress blogs (throught google + proxies/botnets) and then posts comments on them (usually all those generic comments you see on wordpress blogs such as "nice post" "good advice, bookmarked" etc). I could literally go on for hours and hours on how people are exploiting search engines, I think that its prime time for Google to develop an AI for this rather then just relying on algorithms. There needs to be a better PageRank alternative that needs to be implemented. >benefits In the most basic terms, for spammers, more links = better search rankings = more traffic = more $$$
- kappaknight 15y ago
  Nice try, pre Skynet bot. We're not falling for your suggestion of building an AI for search. Besides, if one really good one does exist, many/most SEO people would be out of a job; white or black hats.
  - swombat 15y ago
    Why is that a bad thing? Maybe they could do something more productive with their lives than figuring out ways to corrupt one of the most useful information tools humanity has built...
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      Whitehat SEOs aren't corrupting anything. Hell, Matt Cutts gives them advice on how better to do their job.

"buying links"? I'm completely new to this; would you mind explaining what the benefit is of buying links?

by palish 15y ago

"buying links"? I'm completely new to this; would you mind explaining what the benefit is of buying links?

Let's say I run a site with lots of Google juice. For the low, low price of $[big number], I'll link to your site to give you some of my Google juice.

mjwalshe 15y ago
And if you get caught you get banned I know more than one major publication has been caught this way.
- ZanderEarth32 15y ago
  You don't always necessarily get banned permanently, or banned at all. Google might just discount all the links they find to be bought and adjust your ranking according to your new link count minus the paid links. You can always clean up the links yourself and then submit a reconsideration request. Whether that request is accepted, that's up to Google.
  - mjwalshe 15y ago
    True but some times you do get a big slap BMW is probably the best known. And getting back can be a problem for sites with out a high profile and for ever after your on Googles watch list :-)

jeremydavid 15y ago

Historically, a large component of Google's ranking algorithm involves the number of links pointing to a website (and a number of other qualities like anchor text, unique domains, surrounding text, etc.). If my memory serves me, there are over 300 ranking factors - but links are still the most important. By buying links (undetected) you can manipulate the quality and relevancy of your website in Google's eyes and cause it to rank better than it should.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
SquareWheel 15y ago
To add to this, the reason they can't penalize you is because then you would just buy links for your competitor. All Google can do is drop value on links when they detect malicious behavior. As such, buying links still largely results in a positive effect on your rankings. Google is starting to focus more on other factors than links though, social signals in particular are becoming a big factor.
- davemel37 15y ago
  Didn't chrome get penalized for buying links? http://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-penalty-14543.html http://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-penalty-14543.html I think algorithmically they can only discount links from bad neighborhoods, etc... but if they catch you, they will manually penalize you. I think we are a ways away from social signals being a "big factor." While google does claim that they look at social signals, I think from a practical standpoint the only value they provide is raising a red flag when someone manipulates social signals like buying likes and plus ones. The same way google looks at a link profile of a site, they can catch a bad social profile that seems unnatural.
  - SquareWheel 15y ago
    Chrome being penalized was a bit of a special case. Google got caught (even though it wasn't directly them) and they gave a harsher punishment to themselves because they claim they hold themselves to a higher standard. The whole thing was really damage control to save their reputation, they already had a lot of scandals this year. In reality, links are almost never seen as a negative. Which is really a shame, because it makes it harder for good-guy SEO's to legitimately build links when you can just buy 10,000 on Fiverr and not worry about it. And most black-hat SEOs buy links from many players, so even if some are discounted they won't usually still come out on top. Google is getting better at it though. Recently they've been cracking down on blog networks. This is purely conjecture, but I do believe that links are on their way out as the primary signal.

ux_designer 15y ago

You pay for people, link farmers, to link back to your webpage with specific anchor text. The link farmers typically have a network of websites they can distribute this over, offering you a few hundred or thousand links back to your site with your targeted keywords. Sometimes, the link farms even have good pagerank, which makes it even better. That's the whole point of the Google backlinks - get as many links back to your site as you can, and you'll get good SEO. And if you do this, and Google detects it, they nail you.

palish 15y ago
So how much would it cost to "frame" someone else's website for SEO to get them unfairly banned from Google? I'd never do it; it's just an interesting question.
- jaredmck 15y ago
  It's very unlikely. This seems to be one of the reasons google has been turning what appears to be a blind eye toward paid links - it's hard not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
- unimpressive 15y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Probably not any more than it would cost the website owner, however much that is. Depending on how successful your competition is and how much money you have in the bank this could be a viable strategy. And the implications of that make me shiver a little. (Disclosure: I have no idea how much it would cost. But my hypothesis is that it would be the same as if the website owner had done it.)
  - AznHisoka 15y ago
    I think Google simply discounts the non-valuable links rather than penalizes the sites. Otherwise things like this can happen.
- stfu 15y ago
  This is a quite realistic concern. There is a story going around from Germany were smaller online shops were the targets of link-blackmailing. If they refused to pay certain "fees" they were hit by massive amounts of destructive links, i.e. those with "sex", "viagra" or "porn" keywords. Some shops indeed refused to pay and promptly were loosing massive amounts of traffic/customers. Here is the original story, unfortunately only in German: http://www.golem.de/news/google-ranking-wie-ein-erpresser-einem-onlineshop-schadete-1202-89548.html http://www.golem.de/news/google-ranking-wie-ein-erpresser-ei...

xSwag 15y ago

>buying links People who have a high PR website may sell a link (usually in the footer, on all pages) to websites in a similar niche to help them rank better. However, for some people its not blackhat enough. Spammers nowadays tend to use automated software like the following: -xrumer - Developed by a few russian people and primarily used by russian pharmacies for fraud, this is the most powerful "spammer" too out there. You can literally spend $1k and get 1million backlinks within a matter of days and have your site in the #1 position for whatever keyword you're aiming for. -scrapebox - Similar to xrumer, but while xrumer targets forums (vbulletin etc), scrapebox specializes in harvesting large lists of wordpress blogs (throught google + proxies/botnets) and then posts comments on them (usually all those generic comments you see on wordpress blogs such as "nice post" "good advice, bookmarked" etc). I could literally go on for hours and hours on how people are exploiting search engines, I think that its prime time for Google to develop an AI for this rather then just relying on algorithms. There needs to be a better PageRank alternative that needs to be implemented. >benefits In the most basic terms, for spammers, more links = better search rankings = more traffic = more $$$

kappaknight 15y ago
Nice try, pre Skynet bot. We're not falling for your suggestion of building an AI for search. Besides, if one really good one does exist, many/most SEO people would be out of a job; white or black hats.
- swombat 15y ago
  Why is that a bad thing? Maybe they could do something more productive with their lives than figuring out ways to corrupt one of the most useful information tools humanity has built...
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Whitehat SEOs aren't corrupting anything. Hell, Matt Cutts gives them advice on how better to do their job.