Linking to Digital Point DOES harm rankings
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.
Categories: Google
Bookmark: 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
Read some similar posts
Guide to StumbleUpon
Linking to Digital Point harms your rankings?
Who sends the best traffic, John Chow or Digg
Poll: What should Google do about the Digital Point Coop
5 Reasons You Should Link to Me Today
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?
Chetan February 25, 2008 2:38 am | Reply
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.
Patrick Altoft February 25, 2008 3:02 am |
Sorry, 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.
Judd Exley February 25, 2008 11:55 am |
Oh good, I’ve only linked to the forums and didn’t want to remove all the links
Sucker February 25, 2008 4:06 am | Reply
Very interesting observation. I wonder what put DP in a bad neighborhood..
Kenneth Dreyer February 25, 2008 4:06 am | Reply
As Patrick predicted, it might be the aggresive link building and coop network of them.
Chetan February 25, 2008 1:37 pm |
ReplyGood. Don’t link to that
K J A F G C February 25, 2008 6:07 am | Reply
Did you try keeping the link live and adding NoFollow to it?
Tyler February 25, 2008 6:51 am | Reply
No, the link wasn’t really necessary in the post so I just removed it.
Patrick Altoft February 25, 2008 9:03 am |
ReplyPatrick, 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?
Tay - Super Blogging February 25, 2008 4:48 pm | Reply
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.
blogTalks February 26, 2008 12:47 am | Reply
Could it be because of all the low quality spammyish “make money online” blogs linking to it?
Jeremy Steele February 26, 2008 2:19 pm | Reply
Oops, just to clarify, I meant linking to DP. Not to the post.
Jeremy Steele February 26, 2008 2:20 pm | Reply
What was the software you used to check the rankings for your unique page titles?
Glen Allsopp February 26, 2008 8:26 pm | Reply
It was some custom software, I will see if I can create a public version.
Patrick Altoft February 26, 2008 8:47 pm |
Would certainly be useful, cheers.
Glen Allsopp March 2, 2008 10:37 pm |
Patrick - 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.
Arthur February 27, 2008 2:51 am | Reply
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.
Patrick Altoft February 27, 2008 2:55 am |
Reply[…] to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. If you read this post, you find many who are believing a statement at face value without asking more questions. In […]
Jumping to Conclusions February 27, 2008 2:57 am | Reply
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.
DP user March 4, 2008 11:07 pm | Reply
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.
Brian Rock March 5, 2008 11:11 am | Reply
one word: LINKBAIT
Garret March 7, 2008 3:49 pm | Reply
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
Brandon March 8, 2008 7:19 pm | Reply
I don believe what u have mentioned above!!
pankaj March 13, 2008 9:17 pm | Reply