Live.com is banning sites that take part in spammy and irrelevant link exchanges which are designed to corrupt and mislead search engines into ranking such sites highly.
Barry Schwartz looks at a thread from Search Engine Watch which published an email from Live.com to a publisher:
Your site is acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links with sites unrelated to your site content. Techniques which attempt to acquire unrelated spam links in order to increase ranking are considered spam and your site has been excluded from our index as results. Please contact us once you’ve removed these links and we will reevaluate.
Live Search
Barry adds on his blog;
“So, Microsoft is making an effort on spam. But I believe, not 100% sure, the way Google handles unrelated links to your site, is by not banning your site, but not counting those links. Unless, of course, it is a clear and transparent attempt for you to hurt the search results.”
I don’t know Barry, Microsoft is sending a powerful message to these spammers via the ban, because if sites continue to use these link farms and spammy techniques, they are going to hurt search as a whole being that another engine is going to be effected.
Furthermore, given Google’s stance towards link farming, it can also be assumed that if a business has participated in such questionable tactics, the motivation was either miseducation OR to spam Microsoft.
Perhaps a linking and SEO educational program from Live.com to publishers is in order, and once a site passes the program (think in the same fashion as a driver’s safety course), they are then allowed for reinclusion. Thoughts?
Comments
12 responses so far ↓
Ahmed Bilal on Nov 20, 2006 at 8:54 am
MSN’s “guidelines” for successful indexing
Sushubh on Nov 20, 2006 at 10:49 am
what about selling links through tla?
Ahmed Bilal on Nov 20, 2006 at 11:20 am
Nah man, that’s not going to harm your msn listings.
JP Richards on Nov 20, 2006 at 1:15 pm
“Perhaps a linking and SEO educational program from Live.com to publishers is in order”
Great idea.
Maybe the person wrote the email from Live.com, could initiate a blog like Matt Cutts. That way SEO/SEM people could continue to ethically operate.
Warmly,
JP
Mike on Nov 20, 2006 at 4:38 pm
I have to give MSN credit for attempting to counter the spammers and their tactics.
Maybe search has a chance after all, and who thought Microsoft would be the first to do something about it?
Credit Cards on Nov 20, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I think that banning a site that does link exchanges is too harsh. It’s a poor man’s way of improving his rankings in his own little way.
Ultimately, I believe that only sites that target unrelated (to their site) keywords should be banned. Simply discounting these links in a site’s ranking like Google does it should be enough. Link farms are different altogether of course but not link exchanges. They don’t do enough harm to merit an exclusion I believe. :)
loren on Nov 21, 2006 at 5:54 am
I disagree. Link farming and link spamming is not the poor man’s SEO. With a little time and hard work quality links can be built via exchanges with relevant sites, linkbaiting, comment participation, article contributions, guest blogging, public relations, and directory listings.
The poor man does not have to use spam driven linking techniques to obtain links to a site. Such a thought is exactly what those mass linking dealers want to spread, and it is not true.
Hopefully Live’com’s policy will expose the link spammers for who they are and reward those sites which perform quality link building.
Alan on Nov 22, 2006 at 8:45 am
MSN have banned 2 of my sites for link exchnage. Both used ontopic partners.
I spoke to MSNdude. He first said it automated link exchange - I told him it was done manualy.
I asked him about a 301 redirect. He clearly did not know what that does. I wish i had kept his reply. MSN is a joke.
Dan on Nov 23, 2006 at 12:13 am
Cool. Now its super easy to ban one of your competitors sites on MSN. Just buy some domains, throw up unrelated content, and link to them. Way to go MSN!
LMAO
Alan on Nov 23, 2006 at 5:31 am
here is link to the digtail point thread months ago.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=79415&highlight=msn+reinclusion+request
Robert McCulloch on Nov 25, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Did this message come from directly from Microsoft or Live.com? Notice the ’s’ at the end of the word ‘results’ in the sentance below.
‘…your site has been excluded from our index as results.’
Not to be rude or anything, but I question this authenticity of this report. It just does not sound like anything I have ever heard from Microsoft.
Maybe someone re-wrote the text of the messae from memory?
Any more information on this subject?
Thank you for posting this.
Robert McCulloch
SEO Web Design on Feb 11, 2008 at 1:23 am
People abused the ranking system and search engines come up with protection scheme. And now people abuse the protection scheme to put others out of reach. End of the day, nothing has been done to solve the root of the problem.
Leave a Comment