Beware of LinksManager hosted link directories

[tcampione]

I've received a number of requests recently for link exchanges from people who have link partner directories hosted on the LinksManger site.

I noticed that all of these sites had no Google cached versions. I just checked the LinksManager robots file and all of the link folders are disallowed.

http://www.linksmanager.com/robots.txt

I think they've got an agressive marketing campaign going on. But to stoop to this level is beyond belief.

[Affiliate Boss]

Thanks for the heads up :)

[tcampione]

As a follow up, one of the people who requested an exchange now states that the directories on the LinksManger site are only used for configuring the account.

Yet, the link invitation states clearly “your link has already been posted to ***.linksmanger.com/client-company/ please reciprocate….”.

So, it may be an issue of what is stated in the canned email rather than actual deception on the part of LinksManager.

Either way, caution appears to be in order.

[jstarkweather]

Ironic...I just posted in the "chelseasofnewyork.com" thread about LinkManager. But they are not being deceptive. Stupid maybe. Why they setup their directory structure this way is really dumb. The directories listed to disallow in the robots.txt file are the configuration directories as you stated in your followup. They allow the user to choose whether to use this on-site home or FTP to a local directory on their web-server. So the ones listed in the robots.txt file are those hosting the files themselves therefore the directories are secured from being indexed.

Jim

[indiaseo]

hi

You are right that linksmanager is not a good to take link. You can also be banned if one directory is banned running with such a software

[mj2043]

You can also be banned if one directory is banned running with such a software

I don't think anybody get banned for using linkmanager, but it is useless having links from a site with this robots.txt file. Anyway, banned it commonly misused term in SEO.

[ArcoJedi]

I was researching LinksManager and robots.txt files when I found this thread. I wanted to add 2 cents that there is a configuration option within the LM account where you can have them block the local link directory or leave it unblocked. In other words, the fact that their /robots.txt blocks certain user directories is something the users can choose. LM keeps a copy of all the link files on their server. Some of their users have a decent web host where they can give LM an FTP account to upload the links files to the users' servers and the copy on LM's server is redundant and should be blocked. Some of their users have a cheap blog host or something with no FTP and have to rely on LM to host their link files.

This being said, I'm not sure that LM is a great company or that their software gets actual results. The company I work for uses them, and has used them since before I started working here. It's my job to evaluate the effectiveness. Hence, my research which brought me here.