Are Reciprocal Links Dead?

Are Reciprocal Links Dead?
If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a
method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.
The latest ‘Google Dance’, nicknamed ‘Jagger’, has caused major concern by those suffering
loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine’s listings. So we decided to take a close
look at what is happening and see what we could learn.
We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly
for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we
were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google’s Jagger Update, which is still
in progress at the time of this writing.
By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and
the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of
Google’s actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those
shown by using the browser’s ‘link:’ command. G only reports some of the links to your site,
not all.
Here is what we have seen:
Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July.
They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also,
duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking
site.
As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G’s actions and timing,
our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However,
there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected
that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure.
But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been
listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had
been live in G’s archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there
was some sort of ‘aging’ process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more
likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no
longer appeared ‘relevant’.
The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal
links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because
G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make
sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method
of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.
If your web sites have suffered from the latest ‘dance’, you may want to take a look at the type
and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at
the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.
During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up.
However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content.
They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from
forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of
content, not linking.
The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the
originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In
other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.
This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.
We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on
publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer
awareness.
In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers,
Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build
direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the
fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good
business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent.
We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing
algorithms. That is a fool’s game we are sure to lose.
Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our
customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty
of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of
the search engine rankings.
It’s something to think about.
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About the author
Will Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware, software and web
development experience. He has sat on the ANSII and ISO standards committees, been a
speaker at major technical conferences in the US, Europe, China and Singapore and has
written numerous articles on various technical subjects. Visit Web Stats Gold for more articles
and information on web analytics. You may contact him at will@webstatsgold.com
by WG Moore
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