Beware Link Exchange Scams – is the page Google Indexed
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Link exchanging certainly can be a bit of a nightmare, I found this Link Exchange Scams explained site when someone tried to scam me with a fake PR. I couldn’t understand how someone was showing a PR6 when they were not even Google indexed. Hence my search and my arrival on this site. Clearly I am into SEO but had not stumbled across this scam before.
Basically what happens is that you get invited to link to a site in return for a link back to your site from a very high PR site. Looks great PR is showing to be genuine and you may be tempted to skip the usual checks. But as the site I found explains, the page rank has been hijacked from another source, and there are various means for doing this.
Bottom line is the scammer gets a good link back to them from a site with genuine page rank and you get a link back from a fake site that is likely to have its page rank disappear overnight, and is not Google indexed anyway. So anyone looking for that page in Google will not find it, and effectively the link is completely worthless.
This raises the question again of what is a good link exchange and what is not. For example if you get a link exchange from a page that has loads of external links on it, then it is likely to mean a big message to Google saying ‘link farm’ and a downgrade of your reputation if you are a part of it.
You may also have noticed that I keep mentioning page rather than site and being Google indexed. Why I say page is because you need to know the exact URL that your link is going to be placed on and that the URL of that page is Google indexed. There are sites that have pages within them that have either been dropped off the index or have yet to be indexed, even though their main pages may be indexed and carry PR. So you have to be sure that the actual page your link is being placed on is indexed.
It’s probably worth mentioning that if a page is indexed then it is worth having your link on it, irrespective of PR but subject to other negative factors, e.g. the ‘link farm’ label or a spamming site etc. This is explained further on the Link Building Strategy post.
How to check a page is Google Indexed
So how do you find out if a specific URL is Google indexed or not?
It is actually very simple, you type into the Google search box “site:https://blogaude.com/category/how-to-blogging-advice/creating-a-blog/” without the inverted commas.
If the result says “Your search – site:https://blogaude.com/category/how-to-blogging-advice/creating-a-blog/ – did not match any documents.”. Then basically that particular page is not yet Google indexed.
If it is a genuine site and the page receives enough attention from visitors and gets the attention of the search engines, there is a good chance it will eventually be indexed. But for linking purposes, until it is, it has no real value.
So watch out for those link exchange scams and make sure your link is placed on a page that is Google indexed. There are people out there quite happy to take advantage of the good guys.
I agree with the premise of the article. The first thing I check is whether the page is cached. This is easy, by just clicking the downward arrow in the Google Toolbar next to the PageRank bar.
Yes that is good advice and again very easy to do as long as you have the Google toolbar installed and have the page rank option showing.
Thanks for linking to my article. Much appreciated. I was so angry at getting duped by these scammers I just had to vent about it. I reported one of the site’s that was hijacking PR to Google but they still haven’t done anything about it yet which is odd because experience has shown me they jump on fraud issues pretty quickly.
.-= The Domain Naming Dude´s last blog ..The Domain Registry of America Scam =-.
No problem, I very nearly fell for this because I was in a bit of a rush and on the face of it the site looked pretty good and a nice site. I was just a little suspicious as the old adage ‘ if it sounds too good to be true’ kicked in and I decided to at least do the basic checks. Then when I searched I found your site and thought given the effort you had put into your post I should at least give you a link back from the story and while I was at it, I gave you a digg as well.
“Link exchanging certainly can be a bit of a nightmare” as with all forms of seo its a very time consuming process. unfortunately theres no quick fix
I agree that link exchanges are very frustrating. I don’t think that they work well enough to go through all of that hassle. There are many other ways, such as SEO or PPC marketing that can do a great job on Google rankings.
The only problem is that without links you are unlikely to get page rank and without page rank you can lose position in the search results. So what it comes down to is finding another way to get back links that is more efficient.
thanks for this… I agree that link exchanges are very frustrating. I don’t think that they work well enough to go through all of that hassle…
Link exchanges is a bit of subjective area, when you get someone genuine that sticks to their word it is a great way to get a link. Unfortunately there are way too many people trying to scam you for a free link. I wonder how many people check their link is still in place say a week later for example, pretty sure most will have disappeared into the ether. But at the end of the day links are the primary contributor to page rank, so as long as you are sensible, stay relevant and keep a good check on things it is probably worth the hassle.
It’s been said that obtaining good link partners is one of the requisites of SEO. What you said about going into the Google search box was totally helpful. Yeah, I guess this is the only way to steer clear of those spammers. Thanks for this.
Actually if you are running a WordPress blog you can use the Askimet plugin to help control spammers, that works really well. But these are people who get past the Askimet screen promise you a link from a good page rank site which has been created artificially and where the PR will rapidly disappear or they simply remove the link back when your back is turned. Just some of the hazards of a link exchange arrangement, but links are still very important from an SEO perspective, as long as they are the right sort.