Well, I don’t know if you can consider it as evil. But there’s some kind of a trick or deception involved. I actually did this on my old blog during the ituloy angsulong contest. One of the reasons we won. 🙂
We all know that bloggers are the easiest people to get a link, especially bloggers on personal blogs. You go to a blog, send a message on their tag board asking for a link exchange, and you’ll see your link the next day. Most of the time, these links are sitewide links. Links that could really boost your Pagerank.
So, what’s the trick? I used a DHTML drop down box for their “links.” I give a “link” to them by including them on the DHTML drop down box first, then I’ll send a message on their tag board asking for a link exchange, and they will link to me the next day or so after seeing that they are already included in my “link list”.
Actually, it is indeed a link list. You select a blog on the drop down and you’ll be taken to the blog you’ve selected. It functions like a link. However, to the eyes of the search engine bot, they are nothing but codes. It does not pass any link love. So, the links I’m getting from them are one way links, SEO-wise, but functionality-wise, it’s a two-way link. Their links could boost my search engine ranking but my ‘links’ to them will not, but it could send visitors to their blogs the way an ordinary link works.
Well, bloggers with no knowledge on SEO don’t know that. I’ve been there before. For them, you gave them a link, they have to link you back. And that’s it. That’s how I see it before when I didn’t know anything about SEO then. I just kept on exchanging links to any bloggers I stumbled upon, I didn’t care whether it’s from a drop down or not. You gave me a link, I will link you back. That’s it. I didn’t know back then that someone probably is already taking advantage of me. 🙂 But now that I know about it, I just smile and say, those were the days.
Well, actually, this is not new. For example, Topblogs.com.ph requires you to put a code that gives them link love and link back to your site using redirects that do not pass Google juice (the /out folder is on the disallow section of their robots.txt). We give them data and sitewide links, and we got no link love in return? Well, they did not state on their site that I’m not allowed to edit their code, so I took all the liberty to put nofollow tag in it. 🙂
By the way, my link list on my sidebar is getting long. Do I hear someone complaining if I make it a DHTML drop down list? Harharhar!
Update: I opted out of topblogs.com.ph. It seems that nofollowing their code is not allowed by them, judging by their reaction on the comment section of this post. They have the right to nofollow our links because of their spam problem but we don’t have the right to nofollow their sitewide links on their tracking code because they are sending us lots of traffic. Well, that’s unfair for me, so I opted out of this prestigious top blogs. Goodbye 10 visitors/day. I will miss you. LOL!
same here.. nofollow tag, + visibility:hidden.. hahahaha!
yep.. wala talagang effect ang drop down.. pero ok lang sa mga SEO unconscious people.. hehe 😀
@Jehzeel… mas malupit pala sa iyo. at least sa akin, nakadisplay pa yung code nila, pwede pa iclick. sa iyo, totally hidden. eviler!!! hahaha
it’s trully an evil way 🙂 but i’ll leave this to the experts. There are also bloggers that uses “no follow” on tags/meme for link baiting.
ganon pala yun hehe…now I know..thanks sa info…at least maaga ko nalaman…:)
Jehzeel & Marhgil = Bad People
🙂
Is Philippines SEO moving towards the Dark Side?
now I know, paano ba yung dropdown na dHTML link.
@Dark Knight… hehe. not really. just sharing some stuffs. I don’t do this anymore. all my exchanged links are real now, even the links on my comment box are followed. 🙂 i’m a changed man. LOL!
@skiper… a simple google search will answer your question. daming source dyan sa internet on how to create a drop down link list
hi there,
want to try this one. hehehehe.
hmmm, can we do a link exchange? thanks. 🙂
@Gusher… you just got your link by simply commenting on this post. all links here are dofollow. now, where’s my link? hahaha!
waaaaaaaaaaaaah. ang daya. 😀
daya mo kuya, lalagay q link mo xa link list q. lagay mo dn link q xa sidebar links mo. hehehehe.
Baaad. Taking advantage of poor innocent bloggers..hehehe
he who has the information makes the rules…lol..
Sigh – I wrote this long comment and your anti-spam failed me, and of course pressing back removed the comment.
So – the reason we have to block the out link is because of spam. Right now we get roughly 10+ spam submissions a day. Once we are established, we will get 100+ spam submissions a day. If we were to allow outbound links, we basically get caught on ‘follow-allowed lists’ and our spam level will go to 300+ spam submissions a day.
Furthermore, what we are doing is sending you traffic. You (ie any blogger) can basically put our image anywhere – 99.99% of people put it in the sidebar or in the footer. Since we relaunched, we’ve sent out over 6250 clicks to sites that are joined. Our participating sites have sent less than 1/10th that amount (less than 600 hits to our site). Since going live we have sent over 60 clicks to your site – not a lot, but it is a *steady* trickle. In a year we will have sent (literally) thousands of visitors to your blog. How many other sites generate that much traffic to you? 🙂
The only data we have are unique visitors and pageviews. We publish that data freely for everyone (and accumulative statistics). So there is nothing we are gaining that you do not know about.
So really, by no-following, you are expecting a lot of traffic while sending us very little. Not everything has an SEO-reason behind it.
@AhmedF… the technology for filtering spams are already present. they can’t even pass my simple captcha here. It’s a lame reason, IMO.
lot of traffic? getting 10 visitors from your site per day is a lot? in exchange of 500+ pages linking to your site from my blog? you might not get traffic from our blogs but the way you accumulate one-way sitewide links will eventually give your site a boost in PageRank and your pages will start ranking high on SERPs for a few months time. That’s good for you, and hopefully for us. But can’t you give us a little push in the SERPs as well by dofollowing our links? Is it too much for us to ask for?
You give me a little traffic, I gave you the data and your clickable link on the sidebar that could send your site a little traffic too. I think, that’s fair enough. My nofollow tag will remain.
n.lagay q na link mo kuya, under xa Gusher’s Links. thanks po. 😉
kuya, panu k nkapagparegister xa blog bank?
Gusher,
nakahold yata yung mga magsisign up pa lang…you can check their blog on this link -> http://blog.blogbank.com.ph/
My anti-spam word was ‘sheesh’ – I think that captures it well 🙂
First off, I don’t know why you keep bringing up data. The only data we have are unique visitors and pageviews. Your tracking file gets deleted every day. So whatever data you think we have is slightly mistaken.
Are you honestly comparing your blog comments to a topsite list that generates thousands of hits out every day? Not to mention they are completely different – analyzing a comment as a spam is nowhere near the same as analyzing a link as spam. You need to manually check submitted sites to see if they are spam, no two ways around it.
Furthermore, last I checked, the end goal is sending traffic. Theories behind site-wide links etc are very nice, but at the end of the day, all we care about is traffic. So for every 1 visitor you send, we send you at least 10 visitors. 10x my friend. I don’t know in what world 1x=10x (by your usage of ‘little’).
So – you somehow compared comment spam to link spam, you somehow equated 10x the traffic back as 1x, you somehow think we are collecting some treasure trove of your site ‘data’, and you righteously let me know we are ripping you off. Anything I miss?
@AhmedF… So, you’re saying you don’t have that technology to capture spam sign-ups automatically, that’s why you have to nofollow our links in exchange for our sitewide links to yours? Just for that spam reason?
Your site will be reaping more traffic in a few months time due to the sitewide link from the blogs you’re tracking and you can’t even give us 7 SEO friendly links (1 overall, 1 categorized, 5 tags) in return? Just for that lame spam excuse?
1:10 traffic ratio from my site to yours. How about the traffic that our blogs will send you via search engine because of our sitewide links to yours? And you can’t even give us a link back.
Well, I cannot push you to do it. I’m just telling all the people what I learned about. That you are requiring us to give you a SEO friendly sitewide link in exchange for a nofollowed link to us because you cannot give us a dofollow link because of spam issue.
Ok. Reason accepted. Spams pwned topblogs.com.ph that’s why they cannot link back to us properly the way we are linking back to them. What a brilliant reasoning you got there! Anyway, they are sending us lots of traffic naman. LOL!
are you really working full-time marhgil? how in heaven’s name are you able to answer all these comments?
Dark Knight
http://www.bluemumble.com
@Dark Knight… yup. medyo petiks mode ngayon eh, walang masyadong assignment. nagyoyoutube yung iba habang walang ginagawa, ako, eto, pablog-blog. hehe.
hi Marhgil, i guess it’s better to remove the tracking code and image of topblogs.com.ph from this blog eh?!
@Leo… i’m not breaking any rules naman when i put the nofollow tag coz there’s no rules about it. but obviously, they don’t like the idea. well, if they put new rules today or in the future that we can’t edit the html code anymore, then, i’ll remove the tracking code completely. kung gusto nila, sa kanila lang lahat ng link love at traffic lang sa akin, thank you na lang.
Interesting thread you’ve got going here, Marhgil.
I think I’ll go test the statement about 1:10 traffic. 🙂
I always thought they were keeping track of data other than Unique Visitors and Pageviews. That’s apparently not the case?
Like I said – if you find the traffic so little, you are more than welcome to leave the top list. Or you can try running your own, and let me know how that works out for you. You seem to know everything without ever having done any of it.
Manuel – it is an image tracker, not a javascript tracker. The ONLY other extra info we could track possibly is referrals – which we don’t.
@AhmedF… Why not admit that you just really don’t want to give us the links instead of defending yourself with that lame spam excuse? You look so funny giving a lame excuse and trying to defend it. you simply tells us that your company is way behind of the technology now, coz you cannot even filter automated sign-ups from spammers. You need to do it manually.
if I have to believe you that spammers will spam you 300x a day for opening the dofollow links, it means that the owner of ratified.org is having a hard time every single day manually filtering it. well, good for them, it seems that they already have the technology for filtering spam which you implied you’re lacking, that’s why you can’t give us the links.
It would be easier for us and the discussion will not be this long if you simply said “We don’t give you SEO-friendly links because we don’t want to. We just want your links in exchange for the traffic we could give you. If you don’t like that setup, you’re more than welcome to leave.” Than dragging your company behind the technology by offering that lame spam excuse.
Sheesh. I don’t need to be an all-knowing person to know about this. It is simply common sense.
Alas you are completely missing the point. Who ever said that the submissions were automated? These are manually submitted sites, by the boatload.
In regards to Ratified.org:
1. Ratified.org makes you send them an email – so it is a manual join process. You are welcome to wait however long it takes them to approve a blog.
2. They use technorati for their rankings, so have no load issues. Just stick it in and let Technorati do the all the heavy-lifting (including figuring out if a blog is spam or not)
3. And still, their site just took 17.875 seconds to load.
So I find it funny that you come out and insult our technology, call us evil, say the traffic we send is minimal … while continuing to be on the top list and without ever having run your own top list.
The original software that I used from 2005 for Pinoy Top Blogs (PTB) followed the same system as the new one. All the recoding done was to maximize caching so that CPU load is minimized. I’m confused why this is even an issue at all.
PTB was created not as a traffic exchange system or link exchange program. It’s primarily just a ranking system. It’s not even an analytics service because it doesn’t accurately measure unique visitors/pageviews nor does it gather any detailed data except for unique hits, pageviews and referral clicks.
The premise was that, pinoy bloggers join to be ranked amongst other pinoy bloggers relative to their traffic. That’s it. Anything else derived from that, referral traffic or SEO or bragging rights, are just bonus and should not be miscontrued as the ultimate benefit for joining the system.
I’m not taking sides here but last I remember, this is still a democratic system and anyone who wishes to be included or not included are free to do so.
I missed the days when SEO was an unknow term in the blogosphere and everyone was linking out like crazy. Then Google invented nofollow and people abide by its rule as if it were the government. It’s no fun anymore.
@AhmedF…
So, spammers were able to hire people now and are not using robots anymore? You said that you cannot give us links because spams will rise because you’ll be enlisted to their “follow-allowed list”. So, you mean to say that spammers following the “follow-allowed list” were manually submitting sites now? Oh well, nice logic!
I insult your technology? You’re the one who insulted your technology. You’re the one who said that you can’t fight spam that’s why you’re not giving us the links, instead of telling us that you don’t want to give those links in the first place. As simple as that.
I did not call you evil. I’m actually glad you don’t have that “you cannot edit your HTML code” rule on your site. Well, it seems that you don’t want us to edit it by the way you reacted, so, now, I’m calling you evil, and I will move out of your prestigious top blogs now. Thank you very much.
@Yuga… Well, thanks for your input. It’s not a traffic or link exchange program. Yeah, I know. I just pointed out that they are getting sitewide links from us and we are not getting any links from them so i put the nofollow tag on my code. At least, people deserve to know that. I’m not telling them to follow what I did, I just lay out the cards on what they are getting in to and told them that there is an option to put nofollow tag on it. Well, it seems, there is no option coz Mr. AhmedF will react violently if you put nofollow tag on your code.
And yes, I’m opting out of their prestigious top blogs now.
spread the love!!! spread the links!!!! 🙂
Marhgil I don’t know why you’re doing thisin the first place, he never said you can’t edit the code, you said that. He said kung ayaw mo kung pano yung top site, gumawa ka ng sarili mo. Noone reacted violently, he just made valid arguments which you don’t seem to get. The topsites is not a place where you can sign up to get a free link back to your site, its a site that ranks sites based on their traffic, in exchange you put the button on your site. Honestly bias ka so pointless mag argue. BTW the title of this post is “Getting links the evil way”
@Andre… welcome to my blog! He never said I can’t edit the code, but he implied that. and I quote:
So really, by no-following, you are expecting a lot of traffic while sending us very little.
Is that statement a valid argument? A non-violent argument? So, why is he discouraging me to nofollow the codes? He is implying that I am taking advantage of you by nofollowing the code, you are expecting a lot of traffic while sending us very little. Well, if he simply says, you can edit it if you want since we can’t link back, then we don’t have a problem.
You said: The topsites is not a place where you can sign up to get a free link back to your site, its a site that ranks sites based on their traffic, in exchange you put the button on your site.
Thanks for that explanation. If that is his reply to me on his first comment, then, I’ll accept that. My points are invalid because I made a wrong impression of your site. But what did he say? And I quote:
So – the reason we have to block the out link is because of spam. Right now we get roughly 10+ spam submissions a day. Once we are established, we will get 100+ spam submissions a day. If we were to allow outbound links, we basically get caught on ‘follow-allowed lists’ and our spam level will go to 300+ spam submissions a day.
He’s giving lame excuses for not giving us back links! If he simply says that giving back links is not the purpose of your site like what you have said now, I’ll accept. But his answer is telling me that you wanted to give us links, but you can’t because of spams.
You said:Honestly bias ka so pointless mag argue. BTW the title of this post is “Getting links the evil wayâ€
Thanks for being honest. This blog is open for you to air your side so that my readers can read both sides, not just my opinion. Regarding the title, I honestly think that the way you get links and send us no link back is evil in MY dictionary. But it’s just my opinion as an SEO. For others, it’s ok, but for me, it’s not. But again, it’s just my opinion, and I’m entitled to my opinion the way you are entitled to air your opinion on my opinion. Now that you give a valid point in the argument and not some lame spam excuses for not linking back to us, then I accept it.
PEACE!
ahhh ganun kaya pala kami na talu.. lol
i found a cheater in TopBlogs.com.ph read it here:
http://julia-aquino.blogspot.com/2008/03/topblogscomph-top-blogs-philippines.html
andre and ahmed, what’s your response regarding the issue pointed out by julia? please address it asap before it gets worst. others might loose trust in the system if there won’t be any assurance that this issue is taken cared of.
please don’t take it against the system. pinoy bloggers are just trying to help you guys for the betterment of the system and for the entire blogosphere 😉 we are beta testing it and hopefully our findings will be addressed the soonest possible time with utmost assurance of fairness.
Kya nga ba tinigil ko na yung topsite ko eh. hehehe
There’s certainly no doubt in the fact that One Way Links are the best way to boost the page rank, and drive traffic on your site. But in my opinion, content reigns supreme. If you have a unique good content on your website, search engines will sooner or later find you out, and the traffic such generated will be permanent, and could do a massive good to your overall page ranking.