Link farms

[hassen1]

Link development can be very difficult to imitate. Sure, a resourceful software engineer can create artificial links and imitate them many times over. Getting multiple, identical links from a reputable news source is difficult.

And if link development is identical, or nearly identical, on two unrelated sites - that's often a red flag, indicating the link popularity stems from link farms.

Unethical SEMs purchase keyword-rich domains for the sole purpose of developing link farms. They often cloak the domains' content to hide the gibberish from their unknowing clients. They also purchase expired domains that already have link development, hoping human directory editors (at Yahoo, Open Directory, etc.) won't notice.

Unfortunately, sometimes link spam works. Directory editors are overwhelmed with the number of sites they must maintain in their categories. Savvy but unethical SEMs realize a site won't be penalized for the links pointing to it (no one controls how other sites link to you). So SEMs create link farms and ensure clients don't link to the farm sites.

Search engine software engineers always look for spam tactics. When a new company purchases a domain name, Google automatically resets the PageRank to zero. In addition, when a software engineer discovers a link farm, all the domains in the link farm are banned. Result? Link popularity vanishes.

[humpty]

hmm, why do people still put a link in link farms then, it's so silly and risky

[fadyllan]

Risky, yeah. But whats the worst could happen? The popularity vanished, but thats it. They'll always be a new one, a new farm or something. While it last, the outcome for them is outstanding. I guess thats why the still do that.

[hassen1]

This is why I keep saying, there must be proper Policing (control) in the cyber. To start with there must be a strict control on who registers a web site!

[misteralan]

What do you have in mind? Froze their account to stop them from keep on doing this? Or just arrest them altogether? Is there a way that they could trace these people on the first place? Maybe thats why the point of "what's the worst could happen" exist on the first place.