Question on the TB/LinkSpun/Linking
 

I was reading over some SEO blogs/sites this week, and a number of remarks from Matt Cutts on different things to do with link trading, buying, and manipulations and Google trying to identify and penalize those doing it.

My question is this, wouldn't those on Thunder-Ball.netB/LinkSpun.com be running the risk of this happen to them? If your domain(s) show up in the index on those sites, wouldn't Google (in theory) be able to simply go to the site and hammer everyone?

I am just curious is all. I have not used T-B in years, and with LinkSpun's launch as well as some research on different things, I thought it would be interesting to hear from the regular users of those service(s).

:helpme

first mistake: listening to Matt Cutts.

I'm using linkspun quite a bit now. I would assume jdoughs have taken meassures as to keeping google bot out of the members pages.

dont know if a bot could get much info from the site. i'd think it would have to be done manually (register, login, search sites, cross reference, blah blah blah) and that may be more work than its worth. they'd more likely just change the algo

Yeah, I doubt that the 'G' would actually assign an engineer for such a task. I was just wondering in regards to the bigger picture of it all in regards to the linking strategy.

One thing is to be sure, you could read for a week and probably hear 100 different things to worry about, and no worry about, from the same group of people. I am not taking a stand one way or the other, simply looking to better understand the TB/LS strategy.

I have managed to do well in my niches over the years without doing them. Which is not to say it's skill or not. But reading over some of the methodical stuff some go through in these linking strategies is interesting. As well as reading them bitch about some of the shit trades.
:1orglaugh

When I started visualizing www.linkspun.com I tried to be considerate to the fact that if Google spam department, signed up and created an account, that they would walk away with nothing bad to say about the tool or its users.

I tried very hard to keep all links 'hand placed', and have no intentions of generating any type of include to add links or anything that leaves a footprint for that matter. They are solid links generated between niche relevant sites, between 2 webmasters who've agreed to add them. On the google scale of bad things you could do to harm your site, this isn't even a factor.

Also about profiles or domain lists, despite being asked by a few users already to have public profiles, I do not, and will not have them spiderable by any search engine, in fact they are all completely protected behind a linkspun login and will continue to be that way.

The main reason I built this tool is so that I can use it myself, and not have to worry in 4 years when google says "look what you were doing in 2008".

Barefootsies, I guess to sum it up best. You use a tool like linkspun or TB to expand your inbound link dynamics, to allow you to trade 4-5-6 ways (not just ab,abc or abcd) this is a 'footprintless' method if you use it properly. If i had to explain it with just sentence, it would probably be something like this "A link trading community/tool for adult webmasters to generate links, and then track them" (and the domains/sites involved).

I actually have a very indepth post coming just about this exact thing, but I can't spoil it :) It will be posted on Monday.

Ah ha!

Thank you for the detailed explanation fine sire. I appreciate it.
:pimp

No problem, Im not only the president, but a hair club for men member!


Was going to fit that into my above post, but it didn't feel right (plus I'm bald as fuck)

While there's some truth to some people equating Matt Cutts to Baghdad Bob, his recent pronouncements on LT searches (permanent changes at that) definitely put the onus on some site owners to focus CONTENT QUALITY and trust value instead of mere kw sniping.

Well, I never rely on any ONE source. He is one of many.

For anything in life, you need to have multiple points of views and sources before forming your own opinion. Matt Cutts and his blog are one of them. Even when they give you dis-information, there is a message you can typically get from it.

However, you need to weight that against SEO blogs, forums, and other information from guys who are actually DOING the SEO and based on results. Not hypothesis.

:2 cents:

I'm loving www.linkspun.com many more sites to add soon :)

Other than the platform, which I hear is much better than TB, and the owner is actually around and available, what do you like about it in comparison sire?

linkspun will takeover TB simply because tb is dying of neglect

Yeah. Seems to be the case. However, almost everyone I have talked to about LS is a rave.

According to a Google Search Engineer last year (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...r_amaa/c0j2dxu), Google chooses to 'look the other way' when it comes to organic Porn search(and they specifically ignore porn as a market). As well, it is fairly well known that G likes to take an algorithmic approach to search in general and not involve human editors for a judgment call on a site unless they get a SPAM complaint or some other form of tip off. Meaning they will probably never assign a human editor, or other human resources, to look at the quality of search results for a 'porn' keyword, because they don't care if the search results for porn are good or bad. So this means to me we should have little to fear from Google sending in an infiltrator to catalog each of the adult domains which are actively trading links between each other. That's not to say that keeping these link trading platforms behind a login prompt is unnecessary, but its probably good enough to partition this information from Google's use against us.

...and with that I am now going to remove my TB profile link from my sig. RIP Thunderball