Spammy Link Chains And Stupid Bloggers

27 Responses to “Spammy Link Chains And Stupid Bloggers”

1. dawn on February 23rd, 2008 3:13 pm

   I’m so sorry Catherinel - I’m a fool to have gotten caught up in that nonsense and drag you through it too! I’m so sorry!!!

   dawn’s last blog post..Iowahippiechick’s 2nd Freebie Friday

2. cathlawson on February 23rd, 2008 3:17 pm
   Hi Dawn - it’s not your fault. You realised your mistake and took your tags down.
3. Tim on February 23rd, 2008 4:27 pm

   Well, I’m guess I’m lucky to be left handed then (so was my Dad). It’s funny that I read your post right after I wrote a post (haven’t put it up yet–it mentions reciprocal linking) about blogrolls and what many of them have degenerated into.

   I wouldn’t worry about incoming links affecting you in Google. It’s been said a million times at webmasterworld: If incoming links could hurt you, then ANY COMPETITOR could torpedo any site simply by buying a ton of bogus spam links and pointing them at a domain. Google is not so simple.

   Google is after “link schemes” designed to artificially inflate one’s positioning within google. An individual website operator has no control over who links to him or her. You only get into trouble, potentially, when you link out to others. That’s why despite all the fuss about “nofollow”, it was really a wonderful thing. It allows you to link out freely and not put your site in jeopardy. The example I always used at webmasterworld was this: what if you link out to someone and two years later their site is bought by an adult website operator. Then you are in the position of having a link to what may be a “bad neighborhood”, though that was never your intention.

   Unless you actually return a link to someone who has linked to you (thus, establishing a relationship), the link can’t hurt you. It’ll be counted in your backlink profile, or worst case, simply ignored. But there’s no penalty.

4. James Chartrand - Men with Pens on February 23rd, 2008 5:26 pm

   There is merit in the argument that left-handed people may be higher achievers or have better results in studies. This debate came up quite a few times in my textbooks during my psychology studies, and there is data to back up the claims. I wouldn’t knock the notion so quickly

   As for Dawn, I’m sure she didn’t mean to create an unpleasant situation.

   Cheers!

   Hey… what happened to your Subscribe to Comments?

   James Chartrand - Men with Pens’s last blog post..Void: The Way of Writing - Part 6 of 6

5. cathlawson on February 23rd, 2008 6:24 pm
   @ Tim - thanks for the info Tim. I struggle with all the Page Rank stuff. I wonder if me linking to John Chow caused problems, as I know Google punished him for those linking comps he was doing and my PR went down not long after.

   Mind you - even if Google don’t penalise your blog, I still think it would harm your reputation to be seen in a spammy link chain.

   @ James. Not knocking anything. But, I bet most of these studies were done by left handed people.

   No - Dawn didn’t realise the link thing would cause a problem. To be honest I don’t like all this tagging and meme stuff and I always refuse to participate. I totally refuse to write or link to anything I don’t want to - but that is me. Some people like it.

   I didn’t test out the plugin yet, but I will James. I’ve been getting rid of a few plugins I already had - to get rid of some clutter, as Skellie advised to do in a recent post.

6. Barbara on February 23rd, 2008 7:41 pm

   HI Catherine,

   I dislike the chains and memes too.

   My time is too precious, and being right handed, I may have to work harder to be creative, so I don’t need anymore distractions than I already have.
   Barbara’s last blog post..And You Say You Are Not A Gambler

7. cathlawson on February 23rd, 2008 8:19 pm
   Barbara - I feel the same. But, I would be interested to see the results if they compared left handed men with right handed women. I’m guessing things wouldn’t be so favourable for the left handers then.
8. Jenny on February 23rd, 2008 8:23 pm

   I get tagged for stuff all the time, and I am guilty of tagging other people, but I have recently gone through my site and deleted all kinds of link list posts and such. Not that it will help me, but it’s done. xD

   Jenny’s last blog post..A&D Emergency (Repeat After Every Diaper)

9. cathlawson on February 23rd, 2008 8:27 pm
   Hi Jenny, A lot of people in the blogosphere do enjoy tagging. And I think it’s fine when they’re tagging people who enjoy that kind of thing, but it can be a quick way to annoy those who don’t.
10. Mrs. Micah on February 23rd, 2008 8:30 pm

    I don’t even know where I ended up in it. I’m just hoping it dies soon….

11. cathlawson on February 23rd, 2008 9:04 pm
    Hi Mrs M - I didn’t know you’d got dragged into it too. Mind you, there does seem to be a lot of personal finance bloggers in it.
12. Tim on February 23rd, 2008 11:09 pm

    Hi Catherine. Don’t know who John Chow is. If he was part of that pay per post stuff, I noticed that even the ones that had their visible google toolbar Pagerank stripped didn’t suffer in the SERPS. However, their ability to pass reputation (pagerank) on to other sites may have been lost, or decreased if they suffered a loss in trustrank.

13. cathlawson on February 23rd, 2008 11:15 pm

    Hi Tim - John Chow makes a shedload of money through telling people how to make money online. He was doing all kinds of stuff like running competitions, but everyone had to link to him to enter the competition.

    He went from a PR6 to a PR4 because of this, but Google slapped him even harder than than. If you Google his name, you will see that he no longer even ranks at the top of Google for his own name.

    Luckily for him - he doesn’t rely on Google to get all his traffic, so he still makes a heap of cash.

    cathlawson’s last blog post..How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

14. JoLynn Braley on February 23rd, 2008 11:49 pm

    Hi Catherine,

    Thanks for blogging about this….I’ve felt like I wasn’t participating enough when I haven’t done memes that I’ve been tagged for, but I don’t really like them either. Glad to see that along with you and your commenters that I’m not the only one, thanks again!

    JoLynn Braley’s last blog post..Sugar Addiction - I’m Not The Only One!

15. cathlawson on February 24th, 2008 12:17 am

    Hi JoLynn - you are welcome. I’m glad it’s not just me. Sometimes I wonder if people are participating in them just because they don’t like to say no.

    I will drop by soon - I tend to avoid commenting on both your site and Vegan Momma when I’m being unhealthy. It makes me feel too guilty!

    cathlawson’s last blog post..How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

16. Ian Denny on February 24th, 2008 9:51 am

    I had to reply to a comment from Mrs Micah. Despite being right-handed, she’s currently holding the title of best commenter so far.

    Ian Denny’s last blog post..The Best Bloggers Are Left handed

17. Ian Denny on February 24th, 2008 9:55 am

    P.S. Left-handed men versus right-handed women. I have speculated before that I think women make better bloggers.

    I’ll soon have to ditch blogging if I keep offending people…unless I get a sex change?

    A left-handed female blogger, now there’s a thought…

    Ian Denny’s last blog post..The Best Bloggers Are Left handed

18. cathlawson on February 24th, 2008 12:44 pm

    I also thought Mrs Micah’s comment was funny Ian. But that guy who gave you a real blasting made me laugh too.

    And I wouldn’t worry about offending people. Read Shoemoney’s post about bad publicity.

    I can see endless branding opportunities here. You could even change your domain to a left handed one.

    cathlawson’s last blog post..How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

19. Kelly Andrew Brown on February 24th, 2008 3:21 pm

    Catherine,
    Now I’m feeling bad for the way I signed my posts ‘Kelly @ Small Business Guru’ on your site and others.

    I’m commenting on your site for 2 reasons:
    1 - I really really really - respect the quality of your content and love your insight.

    2 - I like having a link from your site to mine as — I see it as a similar audience.

    i’m not a fan of link exchanges in desperate bids to build traffic and page rank outside my niche. And i don’t want to be a target of something like that either.

    I’m not going to complain if someone links to my site. But I don’t do reciprocal links for linking sake. I get requests but — ehhhh not interested. Thank, but no.

    I also think SEO and PageRank are overrated. Their a valuable indicator and tool for growing traffic….but only one.

    Google’s approach is to mimic the real dynamics of popularity — how people interact with one another. It’s getting exploited by tons of SEO experts and link exchanges and so they have to throw up barriers and penalties & such so it gets corrupted.

    My point? The real value here is — me engaging your site. And maybe someone sees my site and likes the content and becomes engaged as well. If that happens COOL!

    But if Google penalizes me because someone outside my niche links to me? Well so be it — i still think there’s a chance someone going to their site might visit me and there’s a reader i didn’t have before.

    So - cool.

    One other note — Zen Habits has a note on his site about ‘uncopyright’ — basically allowing anyone to post his content on their site. He mentions how he wasn’t worried about SEO for multiple pages with the same content — and look how that site grew. He’s seeing huge success charging $1000 for 125box ads on his site.

    Long story short — I think we all need to stop worrying so much about what google thinks and just continue to act as we see fit. I don’t want to game the system — I just want to do what i do and if it’s good enough and if everyone forgives me for being right handed — i’ll grow my traffic.

    End of Rant….

    -kb
    A horrible right handed blogger

    P.S. Ummmm — i hope i haven’t just invited an avalanche of spammy stuff to come my way
    Kelly Andrew Brown’s last blog post..How I Wasted $6843 on Adwords

20. John Hoff on February 24th, 2008 3:37 pm

    @Catherine - well you have a point about comparing left-handed men to right-handed women, except when compared to driving!

    You know, one of these days maybe there won’t be so much spam! In my lifetime, probably not.
    John Hoff’s last blog post..The Art of Persuasion (Part 1 of 3)

21. John Hoff on February 24th, 2008 3:45 pm

    @Kelly Andrew Brown - I think you’re right on. We’re on the same page. When I design websites, pages, or tinker with my blog, I don’t write or worry about Google, it’s more for the people. I’m sure Catherine is the same but it still does suck knowing other people might be negatively affecting your search ranking.

    But, I don’t necessarily do anything to piss off any of the search engines. Personally, I like Yahoo! much better than Google. To me, Yahoo! brings up what I’m looking for and relies more on my keywords whereas Google many times gives me some yellow pages site with a list of links because it’s a much more popular site. I hate that.

    John Hoff’s last blog post..The Art of Persuasion (Part 1 of 3)

22. cathlawson on February 24th, 2008 4:58 pm

    Hi Kelly - no, that’s entirely different. It’s obvious what your name is in your signature. Some people come on here with weird, or generic names and it makes it difficult to interact with them.

    It does seem that whatever Google to do improve the Internet - the blackhat SEO people game it. It makes it so difficult for legitimate sites.

    I heard that Leo was allowing others to use his work. Hopefully it will pay off for him. A few people have mentioned that they don’t believe that duplicate content is dangerous anymore.

    Hi John - I will be the first to admit that I struggle with parking and also reading maps.

    Talking of Google spam, I was reading an article the other day where someone had searched for several phrases on Google and the first results were all splogs done on Google blogspot blogs.

    If Google are going to continue to allow blogspot blogs to rank higher people will continue to abuse the system.

    cathlawson’s last blog post..How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

23. John Hoff on February 24th, 2008 5:21 pm

    That’s a good point, Catherine. You’d think Google would be much better at recognizing these sites and putting them at the bottom of the search list.

    John Hoff’s last blog post..The Art of Persuasion (Part 1 of 3)

24. wealthy_1 on February 24th, 2008 9:54 pm

    Guess I should be glad I wasn’t tagged for this!

25. Robert Hill on March 1st, 2008 1:02 am

    Dear Catherine,

    Because I was mentioned in a blog in which you were mentioned, I jumped to your site, read what you have to say about memes and then read every comment, jumping to some commentors’ sites as well. Highly educational! Thanks.

    One problem is that some of us who are male, right-handed bloggers are also newbies. A few, like me, have recently recovered from having to start driving on the left side of the road (in Australia), no easy task.

    So, evidently handicapped and somewhat stressed, I got “memed” for the first time ever recently, by a friend. I thought it was cool, linked to her site, and memed five others. However, I did it openly and sent them emails saying I’d not link to them if they said they didn’t want me to.

    Is that okay, in the world of ethical bloggers? — Bob

26. cathlawson on March 1st, 2008 3:59 am
    Hi John - I know - it’s very spammy.

    Hi Robert - You sound like you have been busy. I didn’t realise that Australian’s now had to drive on the opposite side of the road. Why did they change it? That must be confusing.

    I’m sure it’s ok to do the link thing with people you’ve emailed. The only thing with this particular one is that it’s not like the usual memes. They usually write on a particular topic and do the tagging thing, which is more interesting. But, this one is kinda spammy.

    Still - you weren’t to know. I’ve done worse things on the Internet.

    Years ago, I didn’t think twice about spamming the aol member list. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, as I’d chosen people that were in the market for my product.

    And nobody complained, because people just didn’t get so many emails then. That was probably a lot worse than what you are doing. I think I’d get banned nowadays.

27. Robert Hill on March 3rd, 2008 4:53 am

    Hmmm… Okay. I think I have a lot to learn. Thanks.

    Re: Australia and driving — I think it’s the British heritage that has Aussies driving on the left while sitting in (my view) “the passenger seat.” After nearly three years here, however, I feel more comfortable driving in Brisbane than in Houston or Austin or Dallas or, for sure, Boston. I still have to check my hand-written chart, though, to see what to expect when a forecaster says the day’s “top” (high) will be 27 degrees C., which they did today, as we begin autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.

    – Best wishes, Bob

    Robert Hill’s last blog post..Help me, before I read again?

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