Linking to Digital Point DOES harm rankings

by Patrick Altoft on February 25, 2008

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.

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{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }

Chetan 25 Feb 2008 at 2:38 am: 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?
Patrick Altoft 25 Feb 2008 at 3:02 am
Find me on Twitter: 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.
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Sucker 25 Feb 2008 at 4:06 am: Oh good, I’ve only linked to the forums and didn’t want to remove all the links
Kenneth Dreyer 25 Feb 2008 at 4:06 am: Very interesting observation. I wonder what put DP in a bad neighborhood..
K J A F G C 25 Feb 2008 at 6:07 am: Good. Don’t link to that
Tyler 25 Feb 2008 at 6:51 am: Did you try keeping the link live and adding NoFollow to it?
Patrick Altoft 25 Feb 2008 at 9:03 am
Find me on Twitter: No, the link wasn’t really necessary in the post so I just removed it.
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Judd Exley 25 Feb 2008 at 11:55 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.
Chetan 25 Feb 2008 at 1:37 pm: As Patrick predicted, it might be the aggresive link building and coop network of them.
Tay - Super Blogging 25 Feb 2008 at 4:48 pm: 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?
blogTalks 26 Feb 2008 at 12:47 am: 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.
Jeremy Steele 26 Feb 2008 at 2:19 pm: Could it be because of all the low quality spammyish “make money online” blogs linking to it?
Jeremy Steele 26 Feb 2008 at 2:20 pm: Oops, just to clarify, I meant linking to DP. Not to the post.
Glen Allsopp 26 Feb 2008 at 8:26 pm: What was the software you used to check the rankings for your unique page titles?
Patrick Altoft 26 Feb 2008 at 8:47 pm
Find me on Twitter: It was some custom software, I will see if I can create a public version.
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Arthur 27 Feb 2008 at 2:51 am: 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.
Patrick Altoft 27 Feb 2008 at 2:55 am
Find me on Twitter: 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.
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Glen Allsopp 02 Mar 2008 at 10:37 pm: Would certainly be useful, cheers.
DP user 04 Mar 2008 at 11:07 pm: 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.
Brian Rock 05 Mar 2008 at 11:11 am: 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.
Garret 07 Mar 2008 at 3:49 pm: one word: LINKBAIT
Brandon 08 Mar 2008 at 7:19 pm: 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
pankaj 13 Mar 2008 at 9:17 pm: I don believe what u have mentioned above!!
VMOptions 02 Aug 2008 at 9:47 pm: 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.
Abhishek 03 Aug 2008 at 6:34 am: Yeah nowadays DP has become like that
Indian 26 Jan 2009 at 7:42 pm: 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.
Patrick Altoft 27 Jan 2009 at 8:39 am
Find me on Twitter: As I’ve said before. The penalty is for linking To Digital Point Forums, not getting a link FROM them.
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alex 13 Mar 2009 at 10:51 am: we 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.
Rog 26 Apr 2009 at 9:15 pm: 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.
Fighter Planes 06 May 2009 at 12:06 pm: lool i went and removed my posts from DP thinking that this was causing me poor rankings no outgoing links lol
iLinda 26 May 2009 at 2:05 pm: Thanks for the information, I will remove my link from DP and let’s see what happen!