Link Farms and Web Rings - fill me in on some history

1. 40

   Spacey Graceyposted 13 years ago

   I saw on another thread Nelle Hoxie mention how bad it all ended with Link Farms and Web Rings.
   
   Anyone who experience this recent historical event care to share some details with me. It was before my time - well sure I was born then, but I was probably busy churning out babies and trying to remember how to send an email at the time.
   
   Had a quick look through forum posts and hubs but I guess this happened quite some time ago.

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      Ultimate Hubberposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Yup it happened even before I started working online which happened back in 2006. And since then I have been reading on the web that link farms are a no go. From what I have read, link farms are like membership sites and links of members are placed on other members' websites. Thus, they tell us to use multiple anchor text while backlinking so that it won't look automated to Google.
      
      Maybe Nelle can explain this in more detail as they people started creating them back in 1999 to abuse Inktomi search engine.

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2. 40

   Spacey Graceyposted 13 years ago

   Bump - any experienced old hands out there?

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3. 77

   frogdroppingposted 13 years ago

   All it relates to is creating links that were considered spammy. Non-relevant or whatever, not good. I'd imagine someone else can explain it better than I but in a nutshell spam links are massively frowned upon.

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   easybusinesslinksposted 13 years ago

   Link farms was just sites filled with links and nothing else and even today you might have come across something similar with sites that just have banners and adsense ads on it and not much else.
   
   This used to be the old method of earning money and also building up traffic, until Google dominated the search engine market that is and took over the scene and made everyone obey Googles rules, before this the Dot Com boom of people buying up every type of dot com domain name that would pay them through advertising was based on some form of spam link farm type sites and that's why it was phased out, it became too easy to make money, but the sites were not adding value to searchers and so rules had to be introduced to eliminate this type of stuff and that's why getting traffic, now requires a decent amount of effort.
   
   I hated web rings, because they always looked really ugly types of banners right at the bottom of my blogs or websites and so I got rid of them because they just didn't do anything for me.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      The webring is still around and I have a couple of those banners on my sites.  Not sure whether they do any good, but the appearance has improved so I've left them there. I'm curious why Nelle thinks they're a bad idea.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Often, those sites are parked sites, not link farms.  I'm curious exactly what a link farm was - because if it was just a list of links to websites, it's hard to see what the difference is between that and directories, or even sites like Shetoldme and Redgage (which are really just links with a short blurb). 
      
      Which may be why Nelle feels they'll eventually get slapped by Google as well.

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         habeeposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I was thinking the same thing, Marisa, about sites like Shetoldme.

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   sunforgedposted 13 years ago

   Link farms are still alive and thriving - if you are making them you know it and when and if you get caught your not surprised nor very bothered as most are done completely via automated scripts and programs.
   
   Its unlikely that you have seen a link farm as they rarely would come up in search results..as MW pointed out - the description in this thread is more relevant to how a parked page appears
   
   Private web rings are still highly valuable - in yesteryear both methods were done blatantly now they happen behind closed doors.

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   Spacey Graceyposted 13 years ago

   Thanks Marissa and Sunforged.
   
   I've been wondering about backlinking - and please forgive my very naive and inexperienced take on this, but my thinking goes like this:
   
   Google frowns upon gaming the system
   I have read tons of forum posts and hubs that say use this banklink software for hundreds of backlinks, or post of STM, Redgage etc etc
   Are the Google people not checking these types of forums to check what the latest gaming system is and then working on a solution to counteract it?
   Is that what happened with link farms?
   
   Please be gentle with your response, I am very green to all this.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, that's basically what Nelle is saying.  She doesn't use sites like SheToldMe (which is just a place to post your own links), because she feels Google will eventually work out how to penalize them. 
      
      Most of the paid monthly backlinking services don't use sites like that.

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         thisisoliposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         SheToldMe is not really worth it anymore.  Too many people spam backlinking to even let your links see the light of day.
         
         I have just been testing out DevHub, nowhere near the same quality of Hubpages, but nevertheless seems promising, and also has a great quality filter (I wrote a hub about it if anyones interested)

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7. 40

   Spacey Graceyposted 13 years ago

   Bump - just in case there is any hope of reviving this thread. Last bump, promise, then I will let it die its natural death.

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8. 68

   Bill Manningposted 13 years ago

   Link farms are really the same as directories. It's just a big webpage or web site filled with links to many other websites and pages.
   
   The whole point of why anyone wanted to have their links on it was two.
   
   1. They use to have high ranking due to all the links pointing to it, as you had to put a link to them on your site. So you would get a high ranking site, the link farm, linking to you.
   
   2. You hoped that you would get traffic right from the link farm. Again, I see no difference between modern directories and link farms. Most directories are low in rank and worthless IMO.
   
   Some of the other ways not too well know are top list and tgp's. Oh wait, those are for adult sites,,,, never mind!

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9. 71

   thisisoliposted 13 years ago

   Link farms used to be a really good way of promoting your website, however Google soon began penalizing these sites, and created what is known as Bad neighborhoods.  A lot fo people don't actually realise that Google ranks sites according to this metric, which has a differing value based on your sites relationships to bad websites.

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