Submitted on:  06/10/2007

In a nutshell Linksmaster.com sells an automated link exchange program. For $19.95 per month you can instantly get 8,300 links to your site.

In all fairness Linksmaster is not the only company who sales this type of automated link exchange service. I originally wrote about them, because they were brought to my attention.

I would hope that webmasters who read this Article, or my original article on Linksmaster.com, or my Follow up on Linksmaster would realize that participation in that type of program, this kind of linking will not help, and could possibly hurt your site in the long run.

Look at these Google Search Results for Linksmaster.com.

It seems to me that if links were the dominating factor then my blog (Spam-Whackers) would not have the number 2 & 3 position.

From the Linksmaster home page:

Exchanging links with other websites is the fastest and easiest way to increase the link popularity and search engine ranking of your website.The major search engines determine the importance of a website based on the number of links pointing to it from other websites.

LinksMaster.com is a unique link exchange service unlike any other on the Internet. We are the original automated linking service.

Instead of requiring you to submit individual link exchange requests one-by-one to all of our members, we instantly add your website link onto all of our 8,379 member's websites immediately.

Fully compliant with all the major search engine guidelines and standards.

Obvisouly no one from Linksmaster has read Google's Guidelines lately.

Google's Webmaster Guidelines

I suspect that those selling automated link exchange programs believe they are compliant with the guidelines based on the following.

Have other relevant sites link to yours.

They conveniently overlook the following.

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank

Based on the quotes from Linksmaster.com home page I don't know how you could interpret their service any other way. It is a program designed to fool the SEs.

Comments on Link Exchanges by Googlers

Matt Cutts

From Matt Cutts Blog. This is in the comments.

BTW, CrankyDave, your site seems like an example of one of those sites that might have been crawled more before because of link exchanges. I picked five at random and they were all just traded links. Google is less likely to give those links as much weight now.

I'd think about the quality of your links if you'd prefer to have more pages crawled. As these indexing changes have rolled out, we've improving how we handle reciprocal link exchanges and link buying/selling.

Circling back to folks who just had comments approved. Joe Hayes, it’s not that reciprocal links are automatically bad. It’s more that many reciprocal links exist for the wrong reasons

From Webmaster Central Blog

This Article is in Portuguese but is translated into English further down on the page.

Getting your site indexed Don't engage in link exchange schemes. Be aware that link exchange programs or deals that promise to boost your site visibility with a minimum effort might entail some corrective action from Google. Our Google Webmasters Guidelines clearly address this issue under "Quality Guidelines basic principles". Avoid engaging in these kind of schemes and don't build pages specifically for exchanging links. Bear in mind that it is not the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but the quality and relevance of those links.

This article is in Polish but is translated into English further down on the page.

 Linking How to link in order not to violate Google’s webmaster guidelines? If you want to increase your PageRank and to improve your position in the SERPS, you should always be thinking about your visitors’ needs. This refers to content as much as to linking. How to create relevant links? The best way to gain relevant links is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community, especially among those who are interested in the topic, such as blog publishers.

In My Dreams

Do a search for link exchange. They show results to sites (I understand their need to do that). When those site offer programs that violates the Guidelines Google add some kind of warning. In the same way they are warning about sites that might install spyware on your PC.

Additionally they quit selling PPC advertising to those sites.

I can quickly find information about sites that would help me violate the Guidelines. But to find some kind of official information takes hours of research.

IMHO Google should display those links at the top of the SERPS so that people who are searching for information on link exchanges get the Official Google Position

I dream of the day That Google and all the SEs make it easier to find their Guidelines. You know like posting a prominent link on their main Search page to the Guidelines.

I was involved in the web for years before I ever heard of SE Guidelines. Fortunately the Guidelines are basically common sense, so I had not really violated them.

About the Author:

Name:  Connie Shelton I\'m a Super Moderator at the IHY forums. I\'ve been involved in e-commerce since 1999. Spam-Whackers blog is more of a hobby site, which displays my dislike of all kinds of web spam. Find out more at http://www.spam-whackers.com