Last week I noticed an article was being filtered from the search results and thought it might be because of a link to Digital Point.
The link was removed and as soon as Google re-crawled the page it started to rank right where it should.
Clearly this isn’t a particularly scientific test as there are no doubt hundreds of other factors that might have affected the results. The key issue is that for months this page hasn’t ranked where it should and as soon as the offending link was removed the rankings shot up.
I certainly won’t ever link to Digital Point again.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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Good find there. With the authority status and site links in google, digitalpoint should look and be regarded as a good neighbor and site to be linked.
Then why does google devalue the posts that link to digitalpoint? Can you just justify the thing if possible?
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DP has used some very aggressive linkbuilding and runs the Coop which Google probably doesn’t like. Google trusts the forum subdomain but certainly doesn’t trust the www sub domain.
More comments from Patrick AltoftOh good, I’ve only linked to the forums and didn’t want to remove all the links
Very interesting observation. I wonder what put DP in a bad neighborhood..
Good. Don’t link to that
Did you try keeping the link live and adding NoFollow to it?
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No, the link wasn’t really necessary in the post so I just removed it.
More comments from Patrick AltoftSorry, the Coop? I’m intensely curious why this happened, and want to test this on my own.
I too though, have only linked to the forums in the past, so I s’pose I’m safe.
As Patrick predicted, it might be the aggresive link building and coop network of them.
Patrick, thanks for testing this out. I’ve linked to DP three or four times before in my blog, but I have since removed the links and I’m hoping the best.
Can linking to DP only harm search engine rankings, etc. or can it also risk loss off PageRank?
If true that is a worrying trend. How is a webmaster meant to know not to link to a site? It’s not like Google keep a public blacklist.
Could it be because of all the low quality spammyish “make money online” blogs linking to it?
Oops, just to clarify, I meant linking to DP. Not to the post.
What was the software you used to check the rankings for your unique page titles?
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It was some custom software, I will see if I can create a public version.
More comments from Patrick AltoftPatrick – interesting observation. But how can you be sure that removing the link is the reason why the page is ranking where you thought it was. What if someone else of authority has linked to your site at the same time?
I wonder if you added back the link to DP if the page will fall – again this can’t be done is a perfect vacuum but it would be better proof.
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I can’t be 100% sure. My goal was to get the page ranking again and this has been achieved so I don’t really want to add the link back again.
The page had a penalty before (it didn’t rank for its own title tag) so an authority link wouldn’t have pulled it back.
More comments from Patrick AltoftWould certainly be useful, cheers.
Your post sounds like linkbait to me
Set up at least three pages where only you know the titles – one with a “Do Follow” link to DP, one with a “No Follow” link to DP and one with no link at all. See what happens. For good measure you maybe want to do the same thing for other forums as well.
There are other ways to test it, without risking the ranking of the old article.
For example, create a set of new pages (let’s say 6). On two of them, include a link to DP to begin with. On the other four, don’t include a link. Check the rankings for some keywords after a week or so, and then alter the pages. Take the links off the two pages, leave two pages alone (control), and add links to DP on the last two pages.
Now see what happens to the rankings after a week or so. Although it’s hard to scientifically test SEO things like this, this is at least a more reliable and valid test than a single page altered with no control.
one word: LINKBAIT
This is BS
Getting links from DP most certainly wont hurt your rankings in any way. It’s funny that the OP even said there are hundreds of other factors that could of plaid into this equation..lol
I don believe what u have mentioned above!!
This is a very interesting post.
From what I see DP’s forums has a very high authority. Within minutes of a new thread being started it appears in Google’s index.
I am wondering if the test case just happened to be a fluke or other factor. Regardless, your post stresses the need to verify who we link to is not a bad neighborhood site.
Yeah nowadays DP has become like that
Won’t it be easy then to just add a competition’s link on siggy on DP and get them penalized? I don’t think google penalizes you for that. Max is they just don’t consider them, but surely can’t penalize you.
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As I’ve said before. The penalty is for linking To Digital Point Forums, not getting a link FROM them.
More comments from Patrick Altoftwe have recently started working on behalf of a client and have found links from the DP system to their home page, this seems to have incurred a algorithmic penalty from Google for their homepage. As we didint set up the digitalpoint links we are struggling to find out how these can be turned off. can you help, the contact details on their website go to a sales line offering money off all sorts of things, they arent responding to emails.
May have something to do with the fact that Digital Point forums have corrupt mods, and they allow a lot of unfounded acusations of DMOZ editors being corrupt. Google use DMOZ directory.
lool i went and removed my posts from DP thinking that this was causing me poor rankings no outgoing links lol
Thanks for the information, I will remove my link from DP and let’s see what happen!
i need some explain here.. did you mean http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ website forum ?
tell me please…!!!
Thanks Patrick for telling us about DP that it is harmful for our site…..I have followed your instructions and removed my link from DP signature let see what happen
Thanks alot Patrick
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