Can inbound links really hurt you?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by inertia

...and therein lies the punishment! IF you buy loads of dodgy links then your SERPs are balancing on a knife edge. You risk all those sites loosing their page rank (which we've all seen in the last 12 months). All those links become crap and your SERPs drop!

So, with regards to the "sabotage" aspect which we've been discussing. It would be possible to give your competitors some great SERPs which all of a sudden disappear and they don't know why!?

Were that the case, however, they really would not have been penalized, as that which they lost was not rightfully their's to hold.

Still, it could seriously mess with someone's head.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by activeco

There is a Jewish curse that goes something like this: "Let he have a lot and then lose"!

"Onto him whom the Gods would punish they first grant all his wishes."

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by galide

I really don't know what to say ..., I cannot understand your logic.

you have inspired me for a blog post: Galide: SEO: top 5 list of sophisms

It's been a while since first having learned of the various fallacies and their names, but, I believe that what we continue to witness here re. claims that "bad" IBLs are categorically harmful is properly defined as argumentum ad ignorantiam, a most commonly employed sophistic reasoning.

Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[activeco]

Originally Posted by deepsand

"Onto him whom the Gods would punish they first grant all his wishes."

[activeco]

Originally Posted by galide

Note: please don't take offence crankydave, but you have inspired me for a blog post: Galide: SEO: top 5 list of sophisms

Galide, I am afraid you missed it a little bit here.
I think you took Dave's statement too much personal for some reason and further act unnecessarily in a slightly emotional way.

As deepsand rightly says "It's been a while since first having learned of the various fallacies and their names", but IMO it cannot be the correct argument in a non-related discussion or SEO topic.

Let me say that NOTHING is provable, but the perception of the most "steady" parameters is actually product of one's understanding and personal experiences. In the same way one can perceive some statement as true, false or if you like, sophism or anything else.
SEO business is sophism itself and for many it means selling hot air, but for some others it means an incredible help, depending on how much money it brings in.

Most of us here speak out of pure experience and it's no wonder that you hear diametrically different statements. It is very helpful to hear as many as possible opinions in order to either make our own as a starting point or to possibly adjust already built up values.

[crankydave]

galide...

First a question...

How can you prevent something from happening that cannot happen?

Clearly, you think it can't happen until someone proves to your satisfaction that it can. Prove it to yourself or are you just digging for a few links?

You wish to be "noble" and "serve the community". By all means go right ahead. I've already pointed out there are plenty "folks" ("companies" used loosely) that are only too happy to spam your links on forums, blogs, guests books, etc. thousands of times. They are not hard to find.

Personally, I seriously doubt you'll, as the saying goes, "put your money where your mouth is".

Typically I don't take offense easily. When I do, it's not a secret. As far as your blog post goes, if you're suggesting that I'm somehow trying to deceive anyone, you're sorely mistaken.

Dave

[galide]

Personally, I seriously doubt you'll, as the saying goes, "put your money where your mouth is".

If someone is interested in finding out whether the theory is true or not, they can try to hit our site. I am not interested to be honest

Let me say that NOTHING is provable

How can you prevent something from happening that cannot happen?

Is it a contest??

Nothing personal guys, I am just genuinely impressed by the amount of pure wisdom we have got in this thread!

SEO business is sophism itself

in other words SEO business is "confusing or illogical argument used for deceiving someone". I am sure you don't mean that, but unfortunately this is what you write. And I am sure CrankyDave that you don't have any intention to deceive anyone, but again I can quote a few things you write which are very misleading and confusing. Just trying to help the community out here, and help giving SEO the credibility it deserves.

White flag guys, please don't shoot at me (you can shoot at my sites though, this is fine ) - we are all here to promote SEO.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by galide

Nothing personal guys, I am just genuinely impressed by the amount of pure wisdom we have got in this thread!

Just trying to help the community out here, and help giving SEO the credibility it deserves.

I have seen this approach before.

[leesw]

Originally Posted by kgun

If it can really hurt you it would be to easy for an competitor to destroy your site. In my view, a sensible programmed SeBOT should only give non negative weight to IBL's. That means that a link can carry zero weight as a lower limit.

This is how I've always seen it. Giving motivation to competition to harm another business by adding bad links to it wouldn't make sense.

[galide]

I have seen this approach before.

Would like to see the approach a bit more to be honest, cutting the crap out. Ok, let's make peace guys, and focus on the topic of this thread, in a non sophistic way

Agree with leesw, I think we all do except cranky dave who has got his own theory on the matter. Now, if someone comes up to you, and tells you that they suspect their site to be penalised because of bad neighborough, what would you recommend?

[crankydave]

That's what I figured galide.

I gave you the "means". The way to find out yourself. The only question that remains is whether or not you take it, or if all the "blue sky and sunshine" you're painting yourself in is simply hollow talk. Whether or not you're prepared to learn something, first hand, or whether you'd rather continue to be sarcastic and insulting.

Dave

[galide]

mmh, quite a patronising comment... I wish I could ask the moderator to jump in and get some of us to focus more on the topic of the thread instead of letting their ego dictate their comments

Please don't take this as an insult, but I didn't learn anything from you so far Dave, and I am here also to learn as much as I can from this thread. So that's why I ask my question in the first place.

Agree with leesw, I think we all do except cranky dave who has got his own theory on the matter. Now, if someone comes up to you, and tells you that they suspect their site to be penalised because of bad neighborough, what would you recommend?

So..shall we get back to the topic of the thread?

[inertia]

So, if i can sum up what we've decided so far... Bad links in vast numbers wont do your site any good. Some people think that they will have an negative effect, some think bad links are essentially seen as neutral.

What makes sense to me is that the punishment comes when you build too many links from sites that are hit by PageRank drops. I have to say that i have seen evidence of this a few times. But that is the only pit fall I've observed from bad linking.

[Peter (IMC)]

Anyone remember trafficpower?

Confirming a penalty

[inertia]

What exactly were they doing that was against guidelines?

[Peter (IMC)]

just about everything,...

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by galide

mmh, quite a patronising comment... I wish I could ask the moderator to jump in and get some of us to focus more on the topic of the thread instead of letting their ego dictate their comments

Please don't take this as an insult, but I didn't learn anything from you so far Dave, and I am here also to learn as much as I can from this thread. So that's why I ask my question in the first place.


So..shall we get back to the topic of the thread?

Ego? Hardly.

Topic... Can inbound links really hurt you? Every one of my posts is on topic.

The short answer remains, yes. I've given you a way to prove it to yourself. An easy way. You don't even have to "share" what happens. But that would smack right in face of "noble" and "just trying to help the community out" wouldn't it?

What's the problem? Not so convinced your assumptions are right? And no, don't ask that I, or any other member of this forum spam your links for you. That, is entirely up to you to do.

People who say "don't take offense" do so because they already know their comments are "offensive".

I already know the answer to the "topic". To the question that was asked. I've given you a way you can prove it to yourself... repeatedly. You don't have to accept anyone's opinion. You can easily prove it to youself. The choice remains yours.

So what's your choice galide? Are going to "put up" or keep talking smack?

Dave

[activeco]

Originally Posted by galide

I wish I could ask the moderator to jump in and get some of us to focus more on the topic of the thread instead of letting their ego dictate their comments

Agree. So, let's cut the crap out.

[Feydakin]

I'm making a 'hypothetical' post here..

But, with Google's recent jihad against paid links it may have been noted on some less reputable black hat sites that it might be possible to purchase a fair number of cheap links pointed at a competitor's website.. Let those links get indexed and sit for a while.. Then report the site in question for buying links..

It might even be possible to scrape a site together just for the purpose of "selling" fake links to a competitor without their knowledge..

But no one here would do such a thing, would they??

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

I'm making a 'hypothetical' post here..

But, with Google's recent jihad against paid links it may have been noted on some less reputable black hat sites that it might be possible to purchase a fair number of cheap links pointed at a competitor's website.. Let those links get indexed and sit for a while.. Then report the site in question for buying links..

It might even be possible to scrape a site together just for the purpose of "selling" fake links to a competitor without their knowledge..

But no one here would do such a thing, would they??

You think that Google just kills a site because you sent a spam report?

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

I'm making a 'hypothetical' post here..

But, with Google's recent jihad against paid links it may have been noted on some less reputable black hat sites that it might be possible to purchase a fair number of cheap links pointed at a competitor's website.. Let those links get indexed and sit for a while.. Then report the site in question for buying links..

That does seam like a very employable tactic. Although i have no faith in Googles effectiveness at dealing with spam reports. I also think that Google would look into this sort of thing very, very closely before it de-indexed someone because of it.

One thing that also strikes me about this technique. Who could be bothered?! Why spend time and money on destroying your competitors sites when you can spend that time and money on your own site and reap more rewards? Maybe a jilted lover or a conned customer would have the motivation to do such a deceitful thing. Therefore the lesson is... don't fall out, or con, people who know about these sort of things!

[galide]

That does seam like a very employable tactic.

Provided that Google penalises the sites who are buying links. But as far as I am aware, they only target sites selling links, or more generally using "bad" links (hidden links, etc .. ), not sites buying links. And to some extends, they would shoot themselves in the foot, provided that they (Google) sell links themselves.

This was the case for trafficpower, who geopardized their clients by adding backdoors, hidden links etc on their clients sites, as well as building their own network! They got their whole network shut down, and this had also an impact on their clients sites who were (without knowing) using "black hat" technics.

If you are in control of your site, and don't practice hidden links, sell links, etc .. I think you don't have anything to worry about, and just enjoy the traffic if one of your competitors decides to try out the tactic described above.

[Feydakin]

Which they are.. There are plenty of documented cases of websites not being able to get "relisted" because there are still paid links floating around in the wild.. Both on site and off..

We've also run tests in the past where we were able to get a site dropped several pages by tossing the wrong type of links at it.. Admittedly the test sites had weak link profiles, but they were anything from several year old established sites to new sites.. The weaker the link profile the easier it was to kill the site.. Took one of the sites more then 3 months to recover once the bad links were removed and new links were developed..

In an ideal world I would agree that IBLs aren't supposed to hurt you.. But the algo has trouble determining intent and as such tends to be overly aggressive these days when dealing with things Google doesn't approve of..

[galide]

Could you point out an example Feydakin? One single example would kill off any argument about whether or not inbound links can damage a site. I don't believe this can happen, but I would be more than happy to be proved wrong.

[activeco]

Galide, are you abolutely sure one of your two domains can be "attacked"?
They have PR4 and PR5 respectively.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by inertia

Therefore the lesson is... don't fall out, or con, people who know about these sort of things!

Do you mean that if they don't know,....... it's ok???

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Which they are.. There are plenty of documented cases of websites not being able to get "relisted" because there are still paid links floating around in the wild.. Both on site and off..

We've also run tests in the past where we were able to get a site dropped several pages by tossing the wrong type of links at it.. Admittedly the test sites had weak link profiles, but they were anything from several year old established sites to new sites.. The weaker the link profile the easier it was to kill the site.. Took one of the sites more then 3 months to recover once the bad links were removed and new links were developed..

In an ideal world I would agree that IBLs aren't supposed to hurt you.. But the algo has trouble determining intent and as such tends to be overly aggressive these days when dealing with things Google doesn't approve of..

... and the argument flips again! So now we have someone claiming to have proven bad in bound links can hurt you. My head is spinning!

[galide]

Galide, are you abolutely sure one of your two domains can be "attacked"?

I am not sure that they "can" be attacked, but I am definitely happy to let anybody try.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by inertia

... and the argument flips again! So now we have someone claiming to have proven bad in bound links can hurt you.

Inertia, maybe your links were not enough "bad".

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by inertia

... and the argument flips again! So now we have someone claiming to have proven bad in bound links can hurt you. My head is spinning!

inertia... I posted early on in this thread I knew "first hand" that it can happen. Do you think I was just making that up?

And...

Originally Posted by crankydave

Google
Yes. Repeated it several times.
People get paid, quite well, to do that very thing.

Dave

Dave

[inertia]

Originally Posted by crankydave

inertia... I posted early on in this thread I knew "first hand" that it can happen. Do you think I was just making that up?

No i don't think you made anything up, i just figured that it was your personally opinion. Until Feydakins post you were the only one that was categorically saying bad in bound links can de-index sites.

From my experience one persons contradictory opinion is an improbability, two independent contradictory opinions becomes a possibility and if more and more people shout it becomes a probability.

But to be fair Feydakin did offer more experienced proof of the effect of bad links.

[galide]

Well, I personally think that both Dave and Feydakins are making it up. If there is a forum's etiquette, it should also be applied to moderators, who tend to be trusted more than other users, and ensure that they don't mislead people by making things up.

If this is not the case, David, you can easily shut my mouth in 2 two lines, by providing an example.

Besides, I encourage anyone who has to deal with SEO specialists to do the same. Challenge them, ask them for credentials, and never take what they are saying for granted.

[Feydakin]

Wow, calling me a liar?? Cool..

I don't really care if you believe more or not.. It's the main reason I avoid these types of discussions.. People get so convinced of their beliefs, without actually testing them, that they fail to see other possibilities..

I said what I wanted to say.. Believe it or not, entirely up to you..

[janeth]

Originally Posted by crankydave

I've already pointed out there are plenty "folks" ("companies" used loosely) that are only too happy to spam your links on forums, blogs, guests books, etc. thousands of times. They are not hard to find.

Personally, I seriously doubt you'll, as the saying goes, "put your money where your mouth is".

But I will.

I am so sure that there is no way that spamming guest books, blogs or forums will hurt your site that I'll pay someone to spam the hell out of them.

I do believe that there are ways to hurt your competitions sites (with links) but forums, blogs and guest books are not one of them.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by janeth

But I will.

I am so sure that there is no way that spamming guest books, blogs or forums will hurt your site that I'll pay someone to spam the hell out of them.

I do believe that there are ways to hurt your competitions sites (with links) but forums, blogs and guest books are not one of them.

Note I added etc. Janeth. You know me well enough by now.

Just the same, you want to pay someone to to spam the hell out links to one of galide's sites, that's between you and him. I think he posted a link to his blog earlier.

Dave

[galide]

Thanks Janeth -

Just the same, you want to pay someone to to spam the hell out links to one of galide's sites, that's between you and him.

I think Dave still didn't get it

I think he posted a link to his blog earlier.

Not very far Dave, in my signature.

Note I added etc. Janeth. You know me well enough by now.

I think you are in better position than I am in getting the point across now

[kgun]

Originally Posted by kgun

My bolding.

As I have written above, only zero out an undeserved positive effect.

Conclusion:

1. Links from site A to site B can not in theory hurt site B. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
2. Links from site A to site B can hurt site A. (You are who you link to).

Originally Posted by crankydave

My bolding.

Guess here's where you and I can agree to disagree.

"Penalties" effected for what is considered "webspam" are not "zeroing out" an undeserved positive effect.

Dave

Don't pollute my theory with facts.

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Anyone remember trafficpower?

Confirming a penalty

"That means that if an SEO were to build doorway pages directly on your own domain, your site could be removed from Google as a result".

Exactly, the lower limit that I have talked about repeatedly above has been reached.

[kgun]

<off topic>
There is one way a competitor can hurt your site:

Hiding your identity on the internet.

"Monkeygrease is a very simple servlet filter that will allow a web developer to inject JavaScript, CSS or other elements within a web page. This concept was inspired by the popular Greasemonkey extension for the Mozilla Firefox browser. Greasemonkey empowers a user to alter and enhance any web page by allowing them to execute user scripts (JavaScript) on any page".


See the second link in my post.

Related WPW post:
JavaScript Injection Attack Infects 'Hundreds of Thousands' of Websites

He can of course bomb your site with traffic(Bots) so your site breaks down etc, but that is another story.

Experiment:
A competitor intends to destroy your site by throwing thousand's of bad links at it. Aside from the traffic it will bring (see above) there may even be a positive effect of these links.

The extra (positive or negative) traffic can of course hurt you, but again it is your responibility to have enough capacity and block bad bots. This is facts.

In theory, IBL's can (shall) not directly hurt a site. In theory, your site is hacker safe and secure and has enough bandwith and server capacity.

In theory, theory and practice is the same, but that is in theory.

It is your responsibility to lock your house (read secure your eProperty from attacks).
</off topic>

[janeth]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Note I added etc. Janeth. You know me well enough by now.

Just the same, you want to pay someone to to spam the hell out links to one of galide's sites, that's between you and him. I think he posted a link to his blog earlier.

Dave

sorry Dave,

That was the only part I read. It is the bad thing about long threads.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by janeth

It is the bad thing about long threads.

Yes it is. No problem at all.

Dave

[janeth]

Google once said

There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.

Notice the word almost.

I believe there are somethings people can do to get your site banned.

[janeth]

I was just pointed to a private thread where this was tested and I even participated in the thread (guess I am getting old) and they did make sites loose their rankings by throwing different types of links at them.

But they were not from forums or blogs.

[galide]

I believe there are somethings people can do to get your site banned.

There are many.

example:traffic power did get their client's site drop in ranking. They simply added hidden links, backdoors, etc .. on the sites of their clients, which resulted in getting these sites banned as well. And however can get control (even partially) of their competitor's website can achieve the same results.

I have seen a site banned recently because of spammers who had hacked into our text editor software. the text editor is open source (FCKEditor if you wish to know, which has since fixed the security issue..), and there was a security hole which allowed anyone to upload html pages on someone else's website. They uploaded fake paypal accounts on the site through this security hole, and then linked to these pages from other websites. It resulted in getting this site banned, and dropping in ranking.

Now, I don't believe that you can "remotely" get a site penalised with inbound links, without getting the site behaving against the rule in the first place.

I even participated in the thread (guess I am getting old) and they did make sites loose their rankings by throwing different types of links at them.

ok, I think that now it's time to uncover the amazing truth about inbound links and their power. Could you please point us to the site which lost ranking, or does the site disappear by just mentioning it?

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by galide

I have seen a site banned recently because of spammers who had hacked into our text editor software. the text editor is open source (FCKEditor if you wish to know, which has since fixed the security issue..), and there was a security hole which allowed anyone to upload html pages on someone else's website. They uploaded fake paypal accounts on the site through this security hole, and then linked to these pages from other websites. It resulted in getting this site banned, and dropping in ranking.

Wow, that sounds like a nightmare.

[galide]

Wow, that sounds like a nightmare.

The owner didn't particularly care about the traffic, and was not aware of the traffic dropping. But he received an email from his hosting company, who had received an email from the ISP, asking them to take the pages down. He asked me to look into it, and we realised the pages were created in a FCKEditor folder. The site had simply been hijacked through a security hole.

I had a look at the analytics he had set up for his site, and you could see traffic dropping from 200 visits/day to 5/day, a few days after the actual pages had been created. I was happy, I had a little SEO story at the end, and the owner was happy, he knew that we had secured his site

[janeth]

Originally Posted by galide

ok, I think that now it's time to uncover the amazing truth about inbound links and their power. Could you please point us to the site which lost ranking, or does the site disappear by just mentioning it?

lol

You can take my word for it or not I could really careless. I posted what I saw happen and have nothing to prove to anyone.

[galide]

You can take my word for it or not I could really careless.

You cannot use this argument Janeth, this is Dave's one - One person alone using this type of arguments confuses already a lot of people, but if everyone starts saying crap and justifies it by saying "you can take my word for it or not I could really careless" it will make it a completely useless thread.

[jawn_tech]

Just throwing in a question here so I can better understand...

For those of you on the "yes it can" side... Are you talking about an anomaly, where conditions have to be just right, or there's a sure-fire way to knock a site down every time. For instance, (purely hypothetical!) could John Doe bring down giants like Adobe, Amazon, or even MSN? (Hacking doesn't count, IBL's only)

To use a metaphor, what I think I'm seeing is you're saying, yes it's possible to hit a baseball out of the park. But whether or not such a hit would beat the other team depends on what inning it is and how many points they have already. Whereas, this would be the equivalent of pattern... So if a pattern were favorable, it would work. No?

Just trying to put my finger on it, and not discrediting what you're saying.

[galide]

I really don't see the point of giving credits to people who are messing around with false statements.

Anyone can have their own opinion about the matter and provide arguments about why they think inbound links can or cannot have an impact on a website's ranking, but I really think that as a moderator it is a duty to cut short any attempt to deceive people.

This is not a jihad against Dave here, but rather against moderators who launch false rumours, counting on the extra credibility their status gives them, and making our job as SEO consultant very difficult at the end when we face clients who spend some time on forums reading the crap they write and who we have to convince that they should spend more time on ensuring that their sites is built properly, their content relevant and consistent, and get more relevant links rather than wasting their time reading self indulging posts between regular forums users.

I am aware that this is a US forum, and that the politically correctness of the post is possibly not matching everyones standard, but I think that it is important to get this point across.

[jawn_tech]

I'll be honest, I can see both sides.

To be honest I was taken by surprise anyone had seen evidence of ibl damage, in the context discussed here. Personally, I haven't seen it before, but I also don't know anyone who's been struck by lightening. Personally I keep an open mind and give the benefit of the doubt.

That's why I'm asking for clarification for my own understanding of what they're saying. So far it sounds like their position is the damage is the exception rather than the rule, and the conditions have to be just right in order for it to happen. I'm not putting words in their mouth, just getting to know (I think...) the position as I read. 3 pages and growing, wow.

I still feel confident to say or advise to anyone that the normal activities of promoting one's site, building a good link base, following Google webmaster guidelines, is entirely safe and one can and should proceed without worry.

As for intentionally deceiving, misleading, lying... I don't agree it's a fair accusation. People have different views -- just hash it out, find out why, stay above the belt.

Actually, an international forum, just headquartered in US... Half the mods are in UK.