How to Report Link Spam to Google: Good Link Exchange Guidelines to Increase PageRank
Spam: There is a vermin in the Meat
If you have been in the web design / web development business for a while you would understand the headache that most webmasters go through with avoiding link spam. Link spamming has been a nuisance even before Google became a search engine. However, in recent years, with the advent of blogging and the variety of ways the viewer can interact on website platforms, spam links have steadily on the rise and spammers are continuing to create ingenious ways to bypass spam preventing tools such as captcha. Even Akismet, the plugin that comes with every wordpress blog upon installation, sometimes misses serious spam and the webmaster or blogger is left to tackle those unwanted vermins.
This excess in spam has caught the eye of Google and other web concerns. The company is worried that spam links that frequently passes PageRank and so spammers use comment forms, guestbooks, and other dynamic elements of websites to register spam links, and in effect, steal PageRank. Previously, the company had set up a way for concern website owners to report spam links anonymously. The new spam report site requires that reporters have a Google account and must be logged in to report. There are basically five reasons why a link will be considered spam:
- Links exchanged or spammed with the express intent to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web. Sites with excessive link building
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
- Buying and selling links that passes PageRank (creates some unfair advantage against competitor)
- Spamming people mailboxes with excessive link request or post excessive content with the same information on various comment forms
How to report spam
To report spam links and link spammers to Google go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport and report the site that appears to be employing link spam.You will have to include the word “linkspam” (as one word and in lower case) Be sure to include the word in the text area (the last field in the form).
Picture of Google's Link Spam Report Page
Doing Link exchange as a business or website strategy
I exchange links with a lot of webmasters and link exchange agents around the globe, a bulk of them from India. Many of them are very aggressive and their link building strategy sometimes borders on link spam. However, most are genuine link building agents who are just looking out for the best interest of their clients.
If you are exchanging links with sites engaged in link spamming this could affect your PageRank and ultimately website traffic, because your site might be labeled as one engage in a bad neighborhood behavior. This is only logical. If you live in a drug infested neighborhood, it will be only a matter of time before people misconstrued your activity as being linked with drugs.
Link building will always be part of the online business, just as “word of mouth” is to marketing. Unfortunately, like in every other field of business, there are the good guys and the bad guys, and there have to be guidelines to distinguish the good from the bad. Also, spam links are links that violate Google Webmaster guidelines and the repercussion of having your website remove from Google’s search index, will bring undue havoc to your business. So pay attention to whom and where you are doing link exchange.
How to avoid being reported as link spam
- Add a disclaimer at the end of each email link request. Let the person you are sending the request to know that this is a one time email – and mean it. You may also want to point out that you adhere to the Anti-spamming – CAN-SPA Act of2003.
- Keep less than 100 external or OBL links per page
- Stay away from linking to or from sites considered as bad neighborhoods – sites with excessive pharmacy or sex links are an indication
- You can still sell links on your site, but ensure that they are not used for passing PageRank
- Avoid exchanging links with sites that have the same IP or hosting address
- Use a variety of keywords and description in your link request
- Write good original content to get people to naturally link to your site
- Do guest post instead of link exchange
- Write sensible problem solving comments on blogs with DO Follow or Comment Luv
- Get links by submitting articles to article directories and press release directories
- Use you Facebook, Twitter and other social media account to drive traffic to your site
- Check your site periodically for spam added to your site by hackers
What are your thoughts on Google link Spam report
Do you exchange links? What are your thoughts on Google Link Spam Report? Do you think Google should be engaged in POLICING the Internet?
Your blog looks nice, however it would be better if you can use lighter colors as well as a professional design. This will ensure that a lot more readers come to check it out.
Informative post by the way!
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Link building services buy, thank you for your feedback. I will be making some changes to the site
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I just wanted to say that the spam reporting tool in the google webmasters tools is showing some signs of improvement. So I encourage users to report spam and abuse to Google and help clean the net.
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[...] are simple techniques without spamming to increase your site links and increase your pagerank and traffic without violating Google’s [...]
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I keep getting lots of link exchange requests from people from India. But I don’t accept them because most of them are three way link proposals that I don’t think would benefit me at all. I say this because I always find that the site linking back to my site is Google PageRank 0, have little or no content at all and most of the time there is no link on their home page to their links page. I feel they are trying to artificially inflate pagerank, so I absolutely ignore those requests.
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Romina, you are right. Some of the pages offered for link exchange sometimes have over 100 OBL and a link on such a page is basically worthless. However, there are some great link exchange within the haystack. Personally, i have move to publishing articles to increase pagerank
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