Link-Builder.com

[pcsndreams]

I just received an email from link-builder.com. They want to do a link exchange with one of their clients. I was just curious if anybody has ever done anything or heard anything about this site. I just don't want to get banned from Google because I do pretty well right now with ranking. Any thoughts?

[Links411]

Yesterday, we received over 50 emails from the same company all to different address' that are listed on our sites. All these emails addressed the same topic link, Personally anyone who spams our address' we do NOT deal with, We also take measures to ensure that it never happens again. We have checked there traffic and it isnt that great either.

[pcsndreams]

I was more or less thinking the same thing Links411, but I was hoping to hear from somebody that had actually had some experience with the company because it doesn't actually sound like a bad idea. They have a pretty good FAQ explaining what they do and they also have what seems to be a good opt-out system. But I'll look around for some more info before I do anything. Thanks.

[calmwave]

I also received an email from them months ago. I replied, saying I'd be pleased to review their client's content to see how it could be worked into my site and never heard from them again.

[pcsndreams]

Sounds like they might be just gathering up live Email addresses, I think I'll stay away from them unless I hear something positive about them.

[flood6]

They answer your question in their FAQ:

WHO is Link-Builder.com?
Most website have a company address and telephone number listed. Link-Builder.com does not. Why? The reason is straightforward.

Although few, there are individuals that believe their propose in life is to rid the world of SPAMers. They take it upon themselves to file lawsuits in state courts and seek to have your website banned from the Internet. Yes, we have run across some of these individuals, and for this reason, choose to take a low profile. Please forgive us for not being more forthcoming on our website, but we need to be a bit obscure. For those that expressly request more information, we will disclose a measured amount of company information.

Any site that claims that they have had to take their contact information off of their site because of all the lawsuits and attempts to have their site removed...well, suspicious to say the least.

[pcsndreams]

I agree, Thanks for the feedback

[fathom]

I guess pcsndreams you got some good feedback, and as I tend to speak my mind... I thought I would wait to see what others post (not wanting to influence their opinions).

From me: Pure Rubbish!

[calmwave]

Having communicated with Link-Builder.com to agree to a reciprocal link, I did a follow-up recently to see if they actually included my site. As it turns out, they did, as per email sent to me with page link included.
http://sdk.imanage.com/links.html.

If you scroll below the Resources and wade through the Reciprocal Links you'll find my site "Vehicle Card Pockets".

However, in visiting the site yesterday, I noticed that the LINKS page is gone (used to be in nav bar at bottom of home page), replaced by what appears to be the RESOURCES page (see site map or nav bar at bottom of page). The Resources page no longer shows the Reciprocal Links. I know that it is a site's perogative to make changes as they see fit, but the email requesting my link was dated Sept 26th and barely a month later, all reciprocal links are gone from the site.

Now unless I'm missing something (very possible!) I wonder if this link building firm accumulates links of all kinds only to up their client's page rank and traffic, then once these are established, do away with the irrelevant sites?

Also, if I can still see the LINKS page by clicking the link above, doesn't that mean that page is on the website, accessible to those who received the email/agreed to the link but hidden to a site visitor?

IS this a normal web-building practice?
=======================
NOTE: In trying link above it came up as:
Not Found
The requested URL /links.html. was not found on this server.

Yet is easily accessible from my email link.
(??)

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

Calmwave cites:

NOTE: In trying link above it came up as:
Not Found
The requested URL /links.html. was not found on this server.

Yet is easily accessible from my email link.
(??)

The url provided had a dot after the html in the link. Since the dot indicates that there should be an extension following, and you didn't have an extension you received the 404 error.

As for links to pages that are not found from the site navigation, I wouldn't waste your time with them. They are apparently free-loaders that seek to reward themselves from you hard work.

I have had Link-Builder contact me several times on my client [some clients want me to have the webmaster address so they don't get spammed] sites requesting a reciprocal link. However, I have found that each has been a competitor and not suitable for my client.

You're much better off finding links on your own or working with someone that is willing to do the hard work without spamming people. If the organization has a contact form, it is better to use it than to write to one of their addresses on the site. It shows respect and that you actually visited their site.

I hope this helps.

[calmwave]

Thanks, Doc. Pasting that link and removing the period at the end brings up the page.

Freeloaders and deceitful, it would seem.

[DrTandem1]

I realize this thread is a bit dated, but I just received yet another e-mail from a link-builder client. It was the same format as the others: No URL for the other site, return e-mail is the link-builder.com domain, etc.

I looked up the link-builder.com registration and here is what I found:

Registrant: Link Builder Apartado Postal #7 Tijuana, B.C. 22001 MX Domain name: LINK-BUILDER.COM Administrative Contact: Cruz, Heriberto webmaster@link-builder.com Apartado Postal #7 Tijuana, B.C. 22001 MX 66 48 02 21 22 Technical Contact: Cruz, Heriberto webmaster@link-builder.com Apartado Postal #7 Tijuana, B.C. 22001 MX 66 48 02 21 22 Registration Service Provider: Truepath.com 760 480 8791 760 480 8271 (fax) Call us at (760) 480 8791 or email us at domains@truepath.com if you have any questions about your domain renewal, name server settings, or any other concern. Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record last updated on 12-Aug-2003. Record expires on 09-Jul-2004. Record Created on 09-Jul-2001. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.DNSNAMESERVICE4U.NET 63.70.73.244 NS2.DNSNAMESERVICE4U.NET 203.199.124.239

I then plugged the phone number given into Google and this is the result:

Truepath Christian Web Hosting - Contact Us
... Mailing Address Truepath.com PO BOX 2064 Escondido, CA 92033. Phone Numbers TEL:
(760) 480-8791 FAX: (760) 480-8271 Hours of Operation: Mon-Fri 8am - 5pm (PST). ...
www.truepath.com/contact.htm - 16k - Cached - Similar pages

Funny how they use the name "truepath", yet hide. The next listing in Google gives an actual street address in Escondido (Northern part of San Diego county). It's listed as "Etica Entertainment Inc." at 314 W. Third Ave., Escondido, CA.

[rlrouse]

The problem with using these types of services is a high percentage of the sites in their databases end up incurring a "link farm" PR0 penalty.

And it isn't a simple matter of being selective about which sites in the database you choose to link to. You can link to a site that looks clean, only to find out later that they have linked to a link farm. These penalties eventually "follow the links" and innocent pages get penalized.

IMO, you're much better off seeking link exchanges in the traditional way.

[DrTandem1]

Yes, I agree. E-mails fom link-builder.com clients have not resulted in an exchange taking place.

Tell me more about this PR0 penalty.

[rlrouse]

If you link to a "link farm" (as determined by Google), they'll strip the linking page of all PageRank and relegate it to the bottom of the search results.

[DrTandem1]

Rlrouse,

I've been thinking about what you said and I have a question as to the logic of it. If what you say is true, a website could be created for the sole purpose of penalizing their competition's PR.

For instance, you could have a website that sells widgets called widgets.com. You create another website, about-widgets.com, with a legitimate links page. You then contact your competiton and entice them to link to the about-widgets.com. After a time, you then change about-widgets.com into a link farm. Of course, your original site, widgets.com would have had no links to or from about-widgets.com. Wouldn't Google then discover the link farm and penalize all you had enticed to link to it?

I could see where Google could logically penalize a site for being a link farm, but not linking to or from one. Yes, you control your outbound links, but not the content of those to which you have linked. I also could understand Google not giving any weight to links from a link farm and not counting your links to a link farm as content. However, penalizing a site linking to one seems to open the door to all sorts of problems.

The odds are that with many outbound links, one of them is sure to become a link farm at some point in time, regardless of intent.

[rlrouse]

DrTandem1:

You're right. A webmaster could indeed get his competitors penalized with a scheme like that under the right circumstances. Google will overlook one link (maybe even two) to link farms on a page if the overall quality of the other links is ok. Otherwise it would never be safe to engage in reciprocal linking campaigns at all.

The problem arises when a page has a higher than normal number of links to "bad neighborhoods". If a page has 20 links to it and one of them is to a link farm, you'll probably be ok.

But if that same page links to 2, 3, or more link farms, you should probably expect the page to incur a penalty.

This is why selecting link partners by hand is much safer. I check the PR of the pages that I link to periodically. When I discover that one of them has been hit with a PR0, I delete the link.

If you find your link partners through a "database" of link swappers, your ratio of bad links to good links will be higher than normal and you'll eventually incur a penalty.

And if you have more than a handful of outbound links, you may not "catch" all the bad links before Google spiders the page again, leading to a PR0 for the page with the next update.

Been there, done that. As have a large number of my clients over the years. This is how I got quite a few of my clients actually. They hire me to clean up the mess.

[DrTandem1]

rlrouse,

Thanks for the tips. I only have one site that is engaged in any serious link exchnage. They have all been hand-picked, but I'll go through them again to be sure no farms are there.

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by rlrouse

This is why selecting link partners by hand is much safer. I check the PR of the pages that I link to periodically. When I discover that one of them has been hit with a PR0, I delete the link.

My sentiments exactly... it's not just in the initial linking but also periodically checking that the sites you link to haven't either morphed into something else or gone belly up and had the URLs hijacked - e.g., porn sites seem to wait for established domain names to come on the market and pounce on them to exploit the search engine rankings for as long as they can to divert people to their own sites.

[calmansi]

Hi all

Thank you for the info on link-builder.com, who have now reached Switzerland with their proposal. In our case, they did hit on a precise theme we have been dealing with for months now, so their e-mail sounded genuine.

I almost OKed viewing the other site but then I googled them, and arrived here. Phew.

Thanks again!

Claude Almansi

[dsr771]

I'm becoming very suspicious of the link-builder.com people.

I received one of those emails to exchange, and said ok, they sent back a link, I added it and replied to them -- never heard from them again and they didn't place a link back to me.

I received another email for a diff site from a different person at link-builder. Now they say it will take several days to authorize my link after I have already linked to them.

If you get an email from them, you might want to check them out more first.

[ferret77]

can some please post some address of these fabled link farms

I would like to see one its natural environment instead of imagining it

[fathom]

Originally Posted by ferret77

can some please post some address of these fabled link farms

I would like to see one its natural environment instead of imagining it

Go to any chicken or pig farm to get a view.

Link farm was a typo on a secret government document out all the stink farms! :-)