Can inbound links really hurt you?

[williamc]

Originally Posted by deepsand

That's an example of the drivel that passes for "rep." these days; rcvd. at 00:08 today, 14 MAY, in response to my post of 16:47, 10 MAY, at Can inbound links really hurt you? .

ahh ok, that would make more sense then, thought i somehow missed something.

[williamc]

Originally Posted by deepsand

To expect him to deny that which he knows and understands is wholly without merit.

Thats the whole point tho, kgun does not know anything about the google algo.

He has not seen it, coded it, had any inside info given him about it, and has never done a single test in the past 4-5 years to back up a single claim he has made about it.

You may think that because his mind works in a scientific way, that he has a better grasp of things than many others. The fact is tho, without testing a damn thing, he is clueless and simply guessing. Nothing more.

The other fact is, scientists actually test their theories and conjectures for validity. He has never done so.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by williamc

ahh ok, that would make more sense then, thought i somehow missed something.

Glad to see that you understand drivel.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by williamc

Thats the whole point tho, kgun does not know anything about the google algo.

It's merely applied mathematics; my bet's on kgun over you in that realm.

[QUOTE=williamc;438499]He has not seen it, coded it, had any inside info ...[quote]
As opposed to you?

Originally Posted by williamc

... has never done a single test in the past 4-5 years to back up a single claim he has made about it.

As opposed to your fatally flawed one?

Originally Posted by williamc

You may think that because his mind works in a scientific way, that he has a better grasp of things than many others. The fact is tho, without testing a damn thing, he is clueless and simply guessing. Nothing more.

He knows more than enough to know that you only believe that you have proven something. That's all that is necessary.

[williamc]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Glad to see that you understand drivel.

Of course I do, if not then I would not have reason to debate drivel topped posts made by you.

[williamc]

Originally Posted by deepsand

It's merely applied mathematics; my bet's on kgun over you in that realm.

My bet is on google. Oh and the tests that have actually shown us (the entire community) 99.9% of what has worked on googles serps since they opened shop. While people like you merely regurgitate what others find, many of us actually do the finding.

Originally Posted by deepsand

He has not seen it, coded it, had any inside info ...

As opposed to you?

The quote, not a snippet taken out of context would have read:

He has not seen it, coded it, had any inside info given him about it, and has never done a single test

test. yes, that would definately make the answer to your question: Yes.

He knows more than enough to know that you only believe that you have proven something. That's all that is necessary.

I think the funny PM's and red reps going around kgun right now are all that is necessary.

We stated facts, you stated conjecture. People will make up their own minds, just as Tubby did.

Sorry about that.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by williamc

Of course I do, if not then I would not have reason to debate drivel topped posts made by you.

Since I know what I said, and am therefore able to see that you have not understood, it follows that the above is a non sequitur.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by williamc

blah, blah, blah ...

All of which ignores the fact that the so called test was fatally flawed; and, that not all participants concur with your conclusion.

[crankydave]

Quite enough all. Please continue your "personal debates" in private if you wish.

Thank you

Dave

[williamc]

Fair enough Dave.

The comment about the test tho is relevant is it not?

Seems to me that all participants have already spoken here with one exception, and he is not around much these days. As I have seen, all concur that the targeted sites did in fact end up with the results shown. So who exactly was a participant that does not concur? And how exactly what the test fatally flawed, that one would be an excellant discussion I am quite sure, as all possible flaws have already been brought up and replied to by numerous people.

[deepsand]

1) Who? Look around; the answer is in plain sight.

2) How? Study the Scientific method, along with Mathematics (with a concentration on multivariate analysis,) and you'll have your answer.

3) All possilbe flaws? Sorry; not even close.

[williamc]

Ahh, so not a single direct answer. More conjecture and guessing. Why am I not surprised in the least...

[inertia]

So! I've not visited this thread for a while! Did we come to a conclusion on whether inbound links can hurt you?

[Tubby]

question
"Did we come to a conclusion on whether inbound links can hurt you?"

Far far better than that we have several conclusions.

Mine is,
Yes inbound links are safe.
If the question Is can a website be attacked by someone deliberately targeting specific IBL,s - definite 'Maybe?'

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by inertia

So! I've not visited this thread for a while! Did we come to a conclusion on whether inbound links can hurt you?

The conclusion is for you to draw. I have drawn mine and others in this thread have drawn theirs.

Some of us have tested or been party to the tests in this regard and have posted what we observed and the conclusions we drew.

The thing is, it is impossible to test "cannot" happen. You can only test "can" happen.

Dave

[Feydakin]

Originally Posted by Tubby

Yes inbound links are safe.
If the question Is can a website be attacked by someone deliberately targeting specific IBL,s - definite 'Maybe?'

Probably the most sane interpretation to what I have been saying for more than a year now.. I would qualify it even further, as I have, in that it takes a very specific set of circumstances to use IBLs as a weapon against another website..

[williamc]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Probably the most sane interpretation to what I have been saying for more than a year now.. I would qualify it even further, as I have, in that it takes a very specific set of circumstances to use IBLs as a weapon against another website..

Agreed, we have both said that certain conditions had to be met several times in the thread.

[williamc]

Originally Posted by Tubby

question
"Did we come to a conclusion on whether inbound links can hurt you?"

Far far better than that we have several conclusions.

Mine is,
Yes inbound links are safe.
If the question Is can a website be attacked by someone deliberately targeting specific IBL,s - definite 'Maybe?'

Tubby: I have one practicality where this would be incorrect for you.

The site that the links came from, was a popular PR8 website. In this practicality or scenario, getting linked from this particular site by buying a link or trading or even just begging a link from it, if the linked to sites link profile was similar to our target sites profile, would indeed be unsafe, but there was no outward way of knowing that. Just in case you want to amend your conclusion further.

[Tubby]

Quote
" Just in case you want to amend your conclusion further."

No, I think the chance of any WPW members getting inbounds from a pr8 accidentally is pretty remote. I have no doubt any webmaster could navigate a pathway to disaster if they felt so inclined. I equally have no doubt there are people out there that can damage a website. (I have had two destroyed by outside influences) www,restocar .com & www,photohosters. com.

For webmasters new and old visiting WPW that might be looking for things to worry about. I think inbound links should not be on their list.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Tubby

For webmasters new and old visiting WPW that might be looking for things to worry about. I think inbound links should not be on their list.

I agree wholeheartedly Tubby.

I went back and reread my first post in this thead...

Can inbound links really hurt you?

And this one. Again on page 1...

Can inbound links really hurt you?

I stand by those posts. There's plenty of things to worry about but if you're a good webmaster getting your undies in a bunch over seeing some "undesirable" links isn't one of them.

Dave

[cz]

Not trying to revive this old thread - but rather than sending a PM - I felt it more appropriate to apologize for any untoward remarks I made that were directed at kgun.

After reading his replies and considering them, he did not directly attack me, but countered or tried to explain his reasoning. I suppose it was his abrupt/scientific (not sure how to describe?) style of posting that made me feel as if I was being blown off and dismissed.

I apologize to kgun & the WPW community for any of my remarks that were offensive and in any was rude - I don't want to be labled as a "troll" here. I love this forum!

Best Regards,
cz

[kgun]

So you manipulated me to get the last post in this thread so long

Your post is IMHO an example of an answer to this :

http://www.webproworld.com/breakroom...tml#post284330

question.

[faizali]

You linking to a bad URL can yes, have an adverse effect on your Google reputation.

When it's the other way, i,e., your site being linked to, it causes no harm. You have no control on who links to you and how.

[ukhotels]

I feel google should ignore links which they think are irrelevant rather than punishing a site for linking to a bad URl. In some cases, you will not know who is linking to your site. I think google should think twice about this. You competitors can harm you by linking your site to bad neighbourhood or some link farms just to drop your rankings

[ukhotels]

In link building, can the experts tell me how many links per day is considered appropriate by google and the other search engines. Thanks

[williamc]

that really depends on a number of factors like the industry your site is in, how much media exposure you have recently, social engineering done, etc.

[ukhotels]

Thanks William for your response. However, I am in the travel industry. What do you exactly mean "how much media exposure you have recently, and social engineering done"?

[williamc]

by media exposure and social networking I mean if your site has recently been in a press release or news story or mentioned on a social network, it is expected (and normal) that your backlinks may increase at an abnormal rate for a period allowing more flexibility in rate of aquisition.

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by ukhotels

In link building, can the experts tell me how many links per day is considered appropriate by google and the other search engines. Thanks

Ummm... IMO, looking at it that way leads to a lot of wasted time and resources. I'm convinced links are not a silver bullet, so, indiscriminate link building is a useless activity. 3 quality links is better than 100 blog, directory and article links that pass no benefit a few months down the road.

When a site with 700 links beats a site with 100,000's then... is link building alone going to get a site to top positions? Possibly, but it obviously takes way more links to do it. IMO, for most "retail" sites once you have 100 or so PR 4 or higher links at your home page you're done... I don't think it helps that much. The sites that do well always have 2-5 X more deep links than links to the home page which is a clear indication of quality/popularity. That takes regular quality content additions or products to accomplish.

Using the traffic streams williamc posted are a good way to raise visibility for new content but you still gotta' be adding quality content to use social media! Take the hrs. it takes to build low quality links and devote it to new content. Anybody can build links so you're playing a mugs game when you look at link building as a commodity or a silver bullet. Contrary to popular belief, IMO, links are way over hyped to sell link building services OR needed to compensate for weak onpage SEO strategies. Link building morphed from an activity to raise indexing visibility to provide seed for the crawl into a strategy to manipulate relevance... IMO, yet another mugs game.

just my .02 worth....

[quade]

No, I don't think it will give any negative reflects to you. As Fave said here, Think about yahoo, Adobe sites, They have huge spammy links even..... But they are strong....So, no worries...

[AlexSteve]

I am sure, this will not be a negative effect for you, Because, There are more and more spammy links for some popular guys, but still they all are strong

[BanquetTables.Pro]

Not that everything Matt Cutts says is to be taken as fact, but he did just on his blog links cannot hurt you.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by BanquetTables.Pro

Not that everything Matt Cutts says is to be taken as fact, but he did just on his blog links cannot hurt you.

Where on his blog did he say that?

Dave

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by BanquetTables.Pro

Not that everything Matt Cutts says is to be taken as fact, but he did just on his blog links cannot hurt you.

<sigh>
17 pages... and counting
I give up... RTFM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
</sigh>
There was a day when we thought the guidelines were that... a guideline... now Matt has to endorse it before it means shit... sorry... I got better things to do I'll stick to the guidelines IMO, that's only a coupla' pages of nonsense.... I've never found a problem understanding...

[BanquetTables.Pro]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Where on his blog did he say that?

Dave

It was in a video "site reviews"

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by BanquetTables.Pro

It was in a video "site reviews"

I've watched that video... twice. Matt doesn't say that.

Dave

[BanquetTables.Pro]

Originally Posted by crankydave

I've watched that video... twice. Matt doesn't say that.

Dave

43 minutes in

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by BanquetTables.Pro

43 minutes in

You might want to go back and relisten.

What Matt said was...

...we don't penalize people if a spammer links to you...

That is not saying that inbound links cannot hurt you. Yhey can under the right circumstances.

Not even close to saying that.

Dave

[cz]

That is not saying that inbound links cannot hurt you. They can under the right circumstances.

1. On which SE?
2. Are you sure that you have isolated the effect?
3. Then, how easy would it be to destroy a site?

Google for sure. I have bought paid link/ads that came from every page on a news-site and as they added daily content the link count would grow into the 10's of 1000's.

Discontinue the campaign and "ouch" - I'm on page 3 or worse for awhile.

I've done the same with forum ad/links and had the same numbers pile up and upon discontinuing them - smack!

I once went into my own five year old blog with over 1000 posts and started sprinking in text links too quickly and again - smack!

Things do tend to stabilize for the sites I point them at because they are 8 yrs old and already have a lot of good, quality links anyway. But in my experience if you get carried away in either direction of links, accumulation or loss of, Google swats you for awhile.

On a new site that could be catastrophic, maybe permanent!

Just my observations in my own sites and link campaigns.

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by cz

Google for sure. I have bought paid link/ads that came from every page on a news-site and as they added daily content the link count would grow into the 10's of 1000's.

Discontinue the campaign and "ouch" - I'm on page 3 or worse for awhile.

Ummm... once the ads stop running of course the links disappear... and you got what you paid for... a temporary solution to long term problem.

Originally Posted by cz

I've done the same with forum ad/links and had the same numbers pile up and upon discontinuing them - smack!

see above

Originally Posted by cz

I once went into my own five year old blog with over 1000 posts and started sprinking in text links too quickly and again - smack!

and now both you and those you have sold to are quite possibly on Google's list of known buyers and sellers of links. If you don't think it exists... stop and think about it. since you claim you got a smackdown. It wiould be kinda' wasteful of an engineers time to not record what he found for the spam team

Originally Posted by cz

Just my observations in my own sites and link campaigns.

Thanks for sharing

[cz]

Terry Van Horne

You're welcome. I was of course, trying to illustrate to m.furqan.latif, that I'd seen what crankydave was alluding to - in part.

I don't currently buy an ad if it isn't "nofollow" and the incident with the blog was a very long time ago.

I learned a long time ago that links, accumulated through referrals who liked something on one of my sites, social media, and honest blog links, within unique content, are the only way to go for long term success. That, along with content which offers value.

I know who butters my bread and take great pain to stay within Google guidelines.

[Terry Van Horne]

Agreed but... if there's a good site and they choose to not use nofollow... I don't know because I do not check. I am buying an ad... therein is the BS that is the paid link stance of Google. They are in a sense telling you who you can buy ads from aren't they? IMO, that's the real reason for the kafuffle... Also how would some know they are supposed to use nofollow... they have no need to know Google's guidelines yet are expected to by Google and the Cuttletts "who'd rat their own mother... god forbid she try to monetize a website herself" .... sorry it all sounds like protecting the bottom line in bad times

Google loves it when you buy links... from them... anyone else is bad? A little self serving if you ask me and at some point they likely will be in court defending against that argument.

I can argue both sides of this and both seem legit arguments but...

[kgun]

1. Don't confuse more important topics by bringing up this outdated thread.
2. Use your and others time and focus on better subjects.
3. Conclusion: Boring and disturbing.
4. Remember: This claims to be a professional forum.
5. Return to page 1 the question is answered there.

[williamc]

Originally Posted by kgun

1. Don't confuse more important topics by bringing up this outdated thread.
2. Use your and others time and focus on better subjects.
3. Conclusion: Boring and disturbing.
4. Remember: This claims to be a professional forum.
5. Return to page 1 the question is answered there.

1: There are no more important topics to webmasters trying to rank. There may be some 'as important' topics, but there are no 'more important' ones. The usefulness of Links will never be outdated in our lifetimes while Google is still around using them to adjust rankings.

2: Read #1. There are no better subjects to be completely aware of all arguements on than links, only some that are just as good.

3: Yes, you are. Sorry Kjell, but often times you spout things like the above post that are simply useless and boring.

4: Yes, and as professionals, everyone should be aware of all things possible with links. Simply because this is an old thread, it does not make CZ and Terry's input any less imprtant. Your input attempting to belittle them however, was not needed and is at best unprofessional and undeserving of one who wants people to think he has a brain.

5: The answers are on all pages of this thread, and to get a full understanding the entire thread should be digested. Otherwise you simply have a couple peoples 'opinions' to base an intelligent decision off of. Once again, stop thinking that other people can not make rational decisions. Unlike you, most people like to read many arguements and create their own rationality from the digested information.

I think that about sums it up rather well.

[Feydakin]

1. You topped a one month dead thread and tell others to not top it?!?!?

Personally, I'm hoping to get another 107, uh, 106, posts in this thread so it hits 1,000

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

1. You topped a one month dead thread and tell others to not top it?!?!?

Personally, I'm hoping to get another 107, uh, 106, posts in this thread so it hits 1,000

No, Todays post was deleted.

For me, the evidence is on page one. Of course everybody can make up their own mind.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by kgun

Todays post was deleted.

For me, the evidence is on page one. Of course everybody can make up their own mind.

yes... there was a post that cannot be seen anymore that topped the thread.

Dave

[kgun]

Two more anonymous red in this thread.

Anonymous reputation builder read here: The camelot, the straw man and the faceless community.

[Feydakin]

Originally Posted by kgun

No, Todays post was deleted.

For me, the evidence is on page one. Of course everybody can make up their own mind.

Sorry about that.. I usually ignore or report people that top ancient posts.. Well, unless its on one of my forums, then I taunt them then ban them then leave their post up for others to join in the taunting.. But I'm mostly evil these days..

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by kgun

Two more anonymous red in this thread.

Heay bud I'm sick of this... I red repped you becuz you post about stuff you don't know about and do nothing but confuse the facts with BS from a 10 yr. old document. I also red repped deepsand for the same reason nothing anonymous on my part, if it was anonymous then it was by accident! Nothing faceless here I'd tell you to your face you're a goof and an idiot but fortunately for you there's an ocean and many miles between us. Unfortunately I couldn't red rep you again but I'll be back and when I can... well your precious rep will suffer! Even go out of my way to do it! I'm just that kinda guy... if you're smart you'll shut the F up and let this thread die the merciful death it so richly deserves. Lest some other webmaster get his head filled with yours and deepsand's mindless drivel about a document that is about as relevant today as the horse and buggy is to travel.