Linking to Digital Point DOES harm rankings

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.

24 Reader Comments leave yours >>

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.

 
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Oh 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..

Kenneth Dreyer   February 25, 2008 4:06 am | Reply

As Patrick predicted, it might be the aggresive link building and coop network of them.

 
 

Good. 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, 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?

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.

 
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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.

 
 

[…] 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 […]

 

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!!

 

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