Uh-oh. You think the party's over?

Geez that's crazy they even mention the backlink package.

Is this a case of hoax? I hope Angela dive a clarification on this.

This is a case of one site having a problem with people posting links, most likely because of the fact that the backlink packets are being given away for free on a number of forums and it's led to people spamming these sites like there's no tomorrow. Angela has already stopped including sites like this in her backlink packets (forums where you have to make a post to include your link, and blogs where you have to leave a comment to include your link). Considering that you get 30 sites a month, and I've gone through 3 month's packets (that's 90 sites) and have only found this one site publicly stating that they have a problem with people leaving links there, personally I'd say it's far from "the end" of Angela's backlinks.. lol

edit: It's also worth pointing out that the same post on the same forum says "If you signed up and paid for CLICKBANK you may have been ripped off big time, we believe it to be a SCAM!!!!!" (do they even know what Clickbank is?), has ezinearticles and goarticles (oh, and hubpages too) on their "blacklist" and recommends buying paid links (from their "link manager firm" of course) even though everyone knows what Google thinks about paid links that aren't nofollow.

oh my god, Me too checked it, It is dangerous think, If we got banned then there is nothing there at all. However, I don't think all the sites are like that, may be this one only, I am getting some good results from her package....... however, If we would have seen these kind of notices from a site, we have to OMIT that site, that is it..... we cannot put our blame on her, she had helped us to get good links.......
Think like this, the guys not only following her package but there are millions of guys all over the world, then they too can check this and wanna add links, on that case what those forums guys will do, Ok whatever, if they want to STOP this, they just have to remove that option over there in their forum....... have to disable it...... Very simple in their views and our views.....(In their views, they have to disable it, otherwise, in our views we have to omit it...

Only one non-responsive site out of 90 isn't bad going by any means. That's an amazing success rate.

I don't think it's the end of this type of backlinking, it's just an over protective site. Links are what make the web.. the web.

BTW I absolutely love how the admin at that forum sets such a great example for the rest of his community by violating the same terms of service he expects everyone else to follow (his sig links to a commercial site, by his own definition it's a "spam link").

I know linking is a pain in the butt, I wrote this here in Warriors a few weeks back -
'I am not certain what Angela's link system is, but let's suppose it's a linking system that aims at the market in general. Now, if, 200 people sign up for that linking programme and she begins to link those sites, then Google will suddenly see 200 sites all with the basic link format. The bot's will say 'blackhat - possibly and down rate sites using the system'.

Now, this is not me trying to be clever, I try to help out - so the next time you see a multi link system, think carefully before beginning.

This is just a pointless waste of time worrying about it, so one site is whining, let them whine, Just submit to the other sites and forget all about them.

If a site gets seen and SERP'd within 8 hours then it will be down to new content. It will stay high in serp for maybe one or two days, perhaps longer, then drop back.
PR has ne bearing on SERP, and I guess someone is going to say, how do you know. I helped set this section up in Warriors and moderated on SEO here. Many people know me.

The Netscape Unofficial FAQ is upset! Oh no, woe is me.

Who really cares?

LOL, I've actually had people write to me because they were worried because this site "blacklisted" them. If getting someone removed from Google was as simple as creating a "blacklist" on your site and adding them to it, competitors would be "blacklisting" each other all over the Internet. Can you imagine the mayhem this would cause?

there's no way i can say for sure it's linked to using angela's backlinks, But i've used the may and june packages and after an initial steep rise in the rankings, google has just killed my site in the rankings of late (lots of pages are gone). :/
Again, can't say it's related to me linking on these high pr sites but it's the only new component i've added to my seo in the past 3-4 months

Check the supplemental index, boris.

Hi Boris,

If you go and add a load of links suddenly to a site that doesn't have many links then Google will get suspicious and start penalising you.

The sad thing is so many things like this get ruined by people who just hammer them with no patience or regard.

This is not the end of Angela's backlinks at all. What nonsense!

Let me just make one general comment...

Let's suppose you are a google employee doing a manual review of a website, and you pull up a list of clickable urls of all the links pointing to the website. What will you find?

Will you find that there is a large volume of quality links?
Or will you find something that seems odd or of low quality?

I don't know much about Angela's Backlinks, though I would probably be willing to try it and give my review, so feel free to PM me Angela, and also Angela, it might be cool to think about including some one-way directory links in your services if you haven't already. We have consistently found that backlinks from directories, even small ones, can help considerably in building rankings.

The supplemental index was merged into the regular index a long time ago, so those codes / operators don't work anymore.

It's gone - it was merged in - just like when I merge my tomatoes with lime juice making salsa - it's not feasible to get back the original data. There are ways to guess if it is there, but the concept is not really viable anymore, so I wouldn't be trying to figure it out as there isn't much of value to be gained.

Hi Stephen,

The supplemental index was merged into the main index over a year ago. I think there is something about it on Stompernet. However Stephen if you can point us to an operator to get to it, please let us know as that would help.

I don't seem to be the only one who think's the supplemental has popped it's cloggs:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...tml#post891769

As for excessive back linking it can trigger the sandbox - I would have thought most people know that.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and I'm just giving mine.

Hi Steven you seem a little short in your answers? A little more than one liners would be helpful as if you know something about links it would be useful to let the rest of us know if that's ok? This is an issue a lot of people struggle with.

. I've triggered the sandbox in the past by two things - too much content too fast and too many links in too short a space of time. At least that's how I've seen it, what triggers it in your experience?

No one wants to get stuck in the sandbox so the more we can do to avoid it the better.

Exactly, Steven. And even then, Google would have to investigate the reported violation as it most likely receives a lot of frivolous "reports" from sites who are competing with other sites.

Hi Steven,

I would totally agree with that - but I've felt that concept was not worth worrying about if we can't investigate it. How can we access or view the supplemental index or check if we are within it?

Do you feel the supplemental index is an issue we can do anything about or is a threat?

Try this site:

Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator

Hi Francis,

That trigger isn't human intervention, it's just a case of going over a threshold I guess.

Hi Steven,

That's great! Thanks!

Like I said, you're entitled to your opinion and no one will be able to convince you otherwise, so there's no sense in me wasting my time on it.

Angela:

Sites that are legitimately penalized by Google do not "come back" on their own. The problem has to be corrected. There is a mechanism for that within Google and it requires active intervention from the site owner.

OK - I think maybe people are getting the wrong idea here

I at no point said anyone will get penalised for gaining a few hundred backlinks. I simply said 2 pages of mine DID get penalised for gaining up to 75,000 backlinks, proving there are such things as penalties.

I was also refuting that the drop in rankings was due to the Google Dance. Which it was obviously not as the Google Dance does not affect toolbar PR

Keep up folks and read threads fully ;-)

So to summarise, Steven and Angela are saying that the average person can't get sandboxed and doesn't need to worry about it. (I have but I understand why and it was my fault). The most that can happen is an algorithmic shuffle?

It seems like you are both making a pretty definitive statement and your saying franchise has misunderstood what has happened to his website?

Franchiseshop - did your links still show in webmaster tools - that is an easy way to see if you have been deindexed versus a shuffle as your indexed pages still display regardless of SERPS or pagerank.

I did check webmaster tools and no, nothing. Not even a page mention nevermind links.

We understand that you THINK that Google reviewed your website and let you come back. That's fine; people think Google does a LOT of things to their websites. This is common thinking for webmasters. People think Google is a Zeus in the sky, waiting to strike us dead at the slightest variation from the "rules".

If the SAME 25 links went out over 3000 pages, that's NOT the same thing as 75,000 DIFFERENT links. Having the same link appear on all pages of a website is VERY common and happens all over the Internet.

Take this site, for instance. At the bottom of EVERY post are some icons so that you can "social bookmark" the post. How many pages do you think THIS site has? What about all the other THOUSANDS (maybe HUNDREDS of thousands) of sites that have the same icons on every page? Do you seriously think that this triggered some sort of "red flag" in Google and Google had to manually review EVERY SITE that carries these icons or the Social Bookmarking Sites were going to be de-indexed? After all, many of these Social Bookmarking sites are well established sites like you say yours is.

Since you've chosen to go down that road...

*** EDITED TO REMOVE MY LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS ***

My apologies to the forum for allowing myself to be drawn down to his level and to become a part of his p-ing contest. Usually I avoid it, but this guy was too persistent. Now that he's been pegged, I'll offer my sincere apology and let him off the hook for further free education and allow him to persist in his error.

lolz.

I do not believe a word you say. Why should I?

Your link text is: "Here's a SECRET STASH of copyright-free, high-quality content you can use for any purpose"

And after all that work experience, now at 47, this is the best you could do? This is it, the pinnacle of your career at 15 web visits per day you now sell content that anyone can use? Useless rubbish in other words.

Seriously, I am happy for people to mull along and do the best they can. But please, please, stop with the semi read thread but ins and I won't go so personal.

Every one does what they do but if you are trying to tell me that what you have said tonight you preach to clients then you are guilty of making a mess of the web. And whilst we are at it, you coded what in what language exactly? I have a great team of coders who work with me, maybe with your experience in the industry you could give them a hand with a few issues? :-)

lolz at your apology, people with half a brain only need read the thread to realise you gave it nothing of substance so stop with your creepy nonsense.

Thank you Ryan, someone who reads threads, now there is a rarity. ;-)

Alexa is not accurate as we all know, however under the 100k mark is does start to get fairly accurate which is when it comes into it's own. There are a lot of hobbiest SEO people out there who dismiss it but the fact is it is a tool and with all tools they need used correctly. It's all way to easy to say "Hah, alexa, it is inaccurate" but the end result is that the person saying that have usually read it somewhere and are simply repeating the fact, the same with a lot of the myths repeated in this thread.

This is forum full of SEO pro's I would love to see a few more of them jump on this thread to back me up, otherwise I'll have to start posting links to the real deal ;-) Mis information in forums like these ain't a good thing as it spreads like an infection....

Looks like this conversation has degenerated into a who's naughty bits are bigger type of deal.

lolz. Trolling would be posting to inflame, I think you will find I was on the defence. ;-) trolling also adds no valuable input where as what I have said is factually correct. Hard not to seem like trolling when talking to people with their own agendas..

Any way, ta for the perspective.

Yes that's right, a blank page.

Angela:

You don't need to defend your product, believe me the value is incredible. Like I said, I receive your packet and I can just turn it over to an hourly staffer to handle without any instruction at all.

What got me thinking in the Netscape post was their reporting to Blacklist like SpamCop and Spamhaus. Made my question if Google actually spiders those site as a source for "bad neighborhoods" and if so would it impact ranking.

In regard to issue of supplemental index, it is gone as a hack search in Google but there is a way to get an idea of the pages on your site that are in it. When you do a site: search in Google and you get a click to get more results at the end, it is those pages that show, when you click, that are probably in supplemental index.

Rodney

many of the Angela's link in the past are in forums, or blog comments whatever... But simply these leads to link spamming... So I don't encourage to signing up with this kind of link building programs.

ROTFLMAO, I was waiting for the day for this to happen.

I don't mean that in a bad way, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But, must say, I could see this happening. So now, Angela has to find a new method / sources to get links from. And so does everyone else. And unfortunately, those who were not on Angela's list to receive these backlink lists, all has been ruined for a deed initially in good spirit has been ruined.

And my members wonder why I don't give out my 3000+ places to post out to.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who wants to boast where they are getting their links from. If you want to ruin your business, let the whole world know where you're getting the links.

Links should be kept to yourself and treated as Gold dust.

Hey,
I dont think having one link gone bad among a hundred makes that much of a difference.
I have seen that before and just got on with it.
Maybe one link has gone bad, but the others are really worth it.

just my 2 cents.
Faraz

Don't worry about it buddy, it's just the google dance....screw that guy, how dare he send you an email like that...what a clown.

I'm just answering in anticipation of the answers you are going to get above.

In reality, it is something to worry about and with the number of people that are rushing to these sites to get a link, you might be better off putting your competitors URL'S into www.backlinkwatch.com and posting to the same sites they do

C'mon guys. This thread is over.

* NO, its not the end of Angela's Backlinks. She has a great product that's targeted at people that want to get some backlinks w/o having to go and find them themselves.

* NO, this is not the end of backlinking. Backlinking is alive and well. One site owner got so annoyed as to make his site give this warning. Other sites accept our links all the time.

* YES, backlinking is alive and well. You are trading time for money here by buying Angela's product and all the other backlinking products. The main downside in my very personal opinion is that you're now part of a crowd which means that one bad spammer can spoil a specific site for everyone. If you have the time, finding your own backlink dropsites is not so hard, but it does take time, LOTS.

if you go to urbis.com there is a scrollthat shows what the activity is, there is an account created every minute or two,. If this is normal i have no idea how they find you or notice a spike in traffic

You can always create your profiles and then come back about a week later when the moderator interest has diminished and add your links then. I've done that the past few months with Angela's links with great success, at least as far as the links sticking.

It seems to me like using the backlink packets, is very much similar to spam. I mean, I'm pretty sure not many of us have an actual interest in the profile sites we are signing up for. And the repetitiveness (excuse the spelling) seems very spammy to me.

still work for me.
but for make it powerfull need some trick, like create an rss for each link and ping it.
also dot put link after registration..

[DELETED]

I have been using Angela back links for a year now with no problems ,sure some links get flagged as spam most dont.The cost is five bucks a month.The low life rip offs who steal the list and publish it need to be caught.They are just shoplifters.

I'm probably not going to get any praise for bumping this thread but I was late to the debate:

Couple of questions at the webmaster who says his site got penalised:

i) The 25 sites that were linking back to your other site - were they on the same IP or in a similar IP range?

ii) Were the 25 sites linking to eachother in any way?

iii) Was the anchor text for all 75,000 links exactly the same?


My train of thought is that getting a huge number of backlinks from a sites around the web probably wouldn't warrant any kind of punishment. It happens every day when sites get mainstream attention as mentioned earlier in the thread.

However, a shed load of high PR backlinks to a newly established site each from the same IP range and that are linked to eachother in one way shape or form that contains the same anchor probably warrants some kind of red trigger.

Just to be clear, this is pure speculation on my behalf, the above information might not be considered at all - but If I was running the anti spam team at the big G, I'd be considering a vast array of data including said elements above to determine a spam score. If the spam score breached a certain threshold then maybe it'd get flagged.

I've no idea why it came back though after two weeks if it was penalised though. I can't really provide a counter-argument for that. If you're delisted you need to sumbit a reconsideration request for it to come back - this is what I've been led to believe on the Google webmaster forums anyway.

Interestingly I submitted a batch of links to my site at swindon-hotels.org and it's taken an absolute spanking in the rankings- down to something like page 7 from page 3. I'm hoping for the "google dance"...Time will tell.

Since I am one of the UFAQ moderators and co-admin, let me clarify a few major points.

1. Angela herself posted a link in our forum which was removed. She indicated that she read the TOS but violated it anyway. A courtesy email requesting permission would have been ethically nice even though the request would have been denied. We did, however, get an email from an "Angela user" asking permission which was granted and the FREE link was posted for 30 days.
2. The UFAQ is a support FORUM, not a blog or chat site. Entering a post in a support venue with a nonsense type answer just for the purpose of adding links is counterproductive as well as possibly leading the user in the wrong direction, etc.
3. The forum is set to NO-FOLLOW - if you don't know what that means, ask
4. All forum pages are PR-0

One poster here thinks that posting a link to a competitor will get the competitor banned. Not so, the link is removed and the poster is the one that gets banned. :-D

Google's PR is a dead issue and meaningless now as the ranking algo has been modified quite a bit - backlinking is the way to go now.

One other clarification - The admin/owner of the UFAQ has his main domain posted in his signature but the site is NOT a commercial site, no money is made from that site. We DO own over 30 commercial domains and NONE are linked on the UFAQ but we do have paid advertising, display and links, on the UFAQ.

Any other questions, etc. I'll be most happy to address.

BTW: Our TOS no longer mentions Angela, Clickbank or any other SEO site/application/service or otherwise. It is not our intention to single out any particular service. YMMV

/ud

I'm getting forbidden error in ufaq.org

I'm starting to get really annoyed at this program, and it's not because of the time or the idea of it - but the fact that if you arent there the day that email comes in from Angela, a good half of the links within it are worthless as the webmasters obviously noticed a huge spike in registrations and turned them off entirely.

I was going through the packet just a few days after it came in, and half of them disabled registration entirely.

There must be a lot of people abusing the hell out of this system.

I'm a recent subscriber to this system, I wanted to give it a go and see what all the fuss is about. I have noticed that within Angela's PDFs she shows a surprising lack of SEO knowledge with regards to things like PageRank.

The whole system is really what any good SEOer would be doing anyway. And the links are pretty much just basic links, albeit a couple of steps up from a forum post.

Still, it's cheap and saves a little searching around.

I think angela not dead yet, i am still use this technique to increase my backlink and there are still many people sell this service

Some yes, but along with a non-productive answer to a request for help, etc.

Underhanded simply means posting a link in spite of the TOS as well as using the forum posts to include a link, which does the user needing help no good.

The part of the TOS regarding the posting of links is at the very top and the user has to scroll to the bottom to "agree/disagree" in order to move on. But you are most correct, most people don't read the terms.

The only way I know of to post a link in a forum is to make a post, otherwise where/how is that going to be accomplished? ;-)

/ud

I think this is of far more importance to any backlink package that is distributed by PDF or text for mass use. Check out the number 2 ( of five) negative ranking factor


Search Engine Ranking Factors | SEOmoz

google is watching. Time for everyone - not just Angela - to protect their lists.

Interesting, from the point of view that every search engine that visits our support sites bypass profiles. With that in mind, and IMHO, it's underhanded to register on a site, create a profile for link purposes only and then leave without adding anything useful, unless the user is actually going to be a contributing member. Can't do that on all our forums where there is paid advertising on-site. There are a lot of "what-ifs" involved in registering just to create a profile - what IF the site only allows so many registrants - creating a "just profile" takes up a slot.

IMHO only, it's a waste of time and $$ to pay somebody for a link package. Why not just peruse the net looking for fora, blogs, etc. and then ask for permission to post a link, there are many many places to do just that. Google is your friend - :-)

Courtesy can be a wonderful thing. Like I mentioned a reply or two ago, I had a link-package user actually asked to post a link to his real-estate site and I did, for 30 days and backlinks were passed like crazy.

/ud

Agree 100%, that's why we have it disabled. What I find quite amusing tho is people that try to hide links by making the link the same color as the background. Unfortunately we cannot disable html/links because we have to reference other support sites and so on.

/ud

Tom .. I am a retired Netscape programmer and my expertise was regarding the mail/news components (messenger), also a contributing programmer for PHPBB. There are many ways to get around any such addon and/or crawler demon. But we don't have to employ any such things as we don't allow free links in the first place and the feature is disabled for sigs, profiles, etc. => Dog/Trash theory. :-)

BTW: I disabled the no-follow for links in the support forum because we need to have some FAQ links crawled as well as other support links, etc. "no-follow" was working TOO good!

/ud

Mike .. I think you missed my point regarding creating a profile JUST for the purpose of including an ad-link. If a site allows that then so be it. Doesn't mean that I encourage it, I don't. Guess I'm from the "old school" where if you want to become part of a community then by all means do so - contribute. Be a "giver", not a "taker". That's what I meant, not against posting links on sites that do encourage it by design.

And you're right about creating a site to take links, I think I already covered that thought somewhat.

What is your thought(s) about users that see that there are obviously PAID ads/links on a site, then register and attempt to post a FREE link, try to hide them and so on? There were many of Angela's package customers that did just that on our support site. Those are the "people" I'm mainly speaking of. Yes, I do realize that there some very good people out there trying to make a go of their sites but hey, let's do it right.

/ud

Mike .. Of course I agree but somewhat .. You can't make too many rules, eg., you can add a link in your profile but not in a signature or in the posted text and so on, users get too overwhelmed. What we did was to make it a site-wide issue, no free links anywhere PERIOD.

What Angela did was to post an ad-link in a reply that was one of those nonsense replies that I mentioned. We let it run for a while to see what would happen. Sure enough, ad links started popping up in replies that were the same type of nonsense reply. Soooo, what were we to determine about this, coincidence? - I think not. That's when I found out that our link was included in her package from one the customers. Doesn't take rocket science does it. Why didn't we get a courtesy email inquiring about policy?

We still get the very occasional spam-linker and I mean very occasional, maybe one every two weeks or so and are quickly dispatched.

/ud

Well, what one person calls "spam" another person calls "adding value". However, I WAS answering another poster's query with a REAL offer to help him (I really and truly intended to ask my friend to help this poster out), so my post was anything but a "nonsense reply", as it was called.

It's all in how you look at it whether it's "spam" or not, but offering to help someone is anything but a "nonsense reply". That's what I said I had NOT done. I didn't even mention "spam" anywhere at all in my post.

Like most forum owners, just because a link was included in the post, the entire post was trashed as having zero value. I should also mention that at the time those links were left, there was absolutely NOTHING for sale on my "Angela" page, and the "Backlinks" link went to my article, which is quite informative and isn't a direct sales page, so that can't really be called an "ad-link", can it? So it could even be argued that the links themselves weren't "spam", AND I wasn't trying to rank for "Angela" at the time I made that post. (You can tell because the anchor text was "Angela from Aberdeen".) I simply linked to my "Angela" page because it is an introduction of sorts and that's what I've always done on forums so people know a little bit more about me.

So what you're telling me is that you made a post and included two links after you indicated that you agreed to our TOS .. marvelous revelation. If we thought your reply was useful, we would have simply removed the links and let the reply stand.

/ud

So, you would have us believe that those two links you posted had absolutely nothing to do with your commercial venture? C'mon gal, we've been around the block longer than you've been on the planet! You posted in a support forum, what do those links have to do with the original poster's question? You say that you hadn't started your package sales yet but why, a few months later, we start getting dozens of the same exact type of postings from users that purchased your packages? And why did you include our site in your package? Could it be that you made a test run first yourself? Now, if you want to go a bit further with this, you're making money selling packages that included our site. Do we get a commission? How 'bout we charge you $1.00 for every $5.00 pack that included our site? :-)

You have the right to make money just like everyone else and I'm not attempting to deny you that right but be up front and ethical with sites you include in your packs. We emailed you when this first started to please take our site off the list. Never got a reply.

What else is very interesting is that later on we saw in our logs that some users were searching for "Angela", "Angela from Aberdeen" and "Angela Edwards" ... How do you address that? How did they know to search for those? Even had a user - an attorney from California - register just to post a rebuttal to our Spam Linker Warning post. Wonder why? Haven't heard from him since.


/ud

Really?? ad-links (free ones) are not allowed as per our TOS but posters try their best to leave a few links in replies anyway - nonsense replies that is for the purpose of personal and/or commercial GAIN! I have absolutely NO problem with sites that allow it. Just don't come to our site, agree to the TOS and then flagrantly violate it. If it's not read then that's not our problem. And don't come to our site posting links where the intention is to use our free support venue to make money for your own self. Paying for ads is part of your ROI and CODB.

Angela:

Another intersting thing you mentioned is that you made a screen-copy of your "successful" post. Now, if it were me that was putting together a package such as yours I would include a screenshot showing that I made a post and how to do it to include links ... go figure, 'eh?

PS: Here is a link that lists

searchenginejournal.com/seo-blogs-guest-posts/15194

No need to pay anyone, just donate whatever you can to your favorite charity. Some of you may already know this but for those that don't, good luck!


/ud

Mike .. The only "standard" on our site is support for users needing help, that's it no more no less, it's not a chat/blog site - posters come looking for help and that is exactly what they get and expect. The UFAQ has been up for 14+ years now without complaint. Not angry at all, was just puzzled, but no longer, I have my answers. No sense in turning this into a flame battle. Quite obvious what Angela's interest was.

Good luck with your SEO ventures.

/ud

I'm 74 years old and where I come from and was brought up, "Gal" is a term of endearment, not derogatory at all and wasn't meant that way whatsoever.

I was also taught to be respectful and apologetic .. So .. Angela, IF you took "Gal" to mean something derogatory then I sincerely apologize.

We can argue, have heated discussions and so on but when it turns ugly it's time to go. And for you, Mike, have a nice day. If you have a problem and need support, you're most welcomed on our site.


/ud

Mike .. The links were in the body of her post, did you notice her screen-shot of her post? Funny thing is that her post was allowed to remain more than SIX months and no followup was ever posted that MAY have helped the OP.

Already have 25,000+ backlinks across several search engines, not that we need any, but thanks anyways.

Thanks for the "leg pulling", can always use a leg-up on any issue. :-D

/ud

Ok, so I should have said "several" or "many" months or "several weeks", etc. instead, pick one that suits you best. OR just tell us that you had no intention of returning. Doesn't matter really since months went by without a return reply. Not an untruth, just an error. Case closed.

Interesting that you take so many screen shots. Conclusions can be drawn from that as to the reason, surely you don't think we're a pretty site. We've had second thoughts about stuff we've posted related to spam-linkers and we've removed those as this is NOT what we're all about. We're about providing good support to our users, not about debating spam links and so on.

If there is nothing else you need to defend then we can close this issue?

/ud

Give it up. We get that everyone wants to make money, and/or protect their link packet business, or their precious forum, but come on.

Putting a link on a site both is and isn't spam. It's both, so wrap your heads around that, stick it in your pipe and smoke it, pray about it, or do whatever you need to in order to sleep at night. "Contribution" is not black and white, so who's to say a comment with a link isn't contributing to some random visitor's experience? Even a list of links might be a benefit if someone is looking for something specific in that list. Regardless, it's only a few needless bits of information that costs fractions of a penny for webmasters.

And I'm sorry, but if you don't like the smoke, get out of the kitchen. You are on a little thing called the Internet, so tough luck if you get some of the things it comes with. Shut your forum down and go cry in your beer if that makes you feel better about it. Other people with realistic expectations will step up. They'll lock down whatever they don't want to be used and move on. Like we all should right about now...

Cripes, I'll make one last reply. You were banned on July 30, 2009 at 11:46pm .. so if you tried before that and couldn't get in then it wasn't our fault. Hmm, how many months is that, almost six? :-)

Ok, peace out, last post on this subject. Yah I know (sigh!)

/ud

So if my account was "in a holding bin" or whatever, that means I STILL couldn't get in when I tried, right?

All I know is that I tried to get in a couple weeks after leaving my post and I could not get in. I don't send emails to website owners "pleading my case" because if they don't like my links they don't have to keep them there. I don't intend to hassle them or anything. Their website; their choice. I DO like keeping up with online people but I don't have a lot of time to keep up even with my favorite forums, including this one.

I don't think it's too complicated to say that these link packets fall into the gray area between spam and not spam. Now leaving messages on these forums definitely takes it into full spam territory.

I have been extremely impressed by Terry's WSO btw.

Can someone please clarify what Angela's backlinks are, exactly?

I'll treat this reply as a courtesy to answer your question but I really don't care to pursue this any longer:

When a user is relegated to the holding bin they can surely log back in which case we are alerted and take appropriate action to either ban permanently or grant conditional access. Like I said, if you couldn't access the site then there was some problem on your end, such as cookies for instance not being cleared (common problem). There has been an occasional glitch so maybe you got glitched, who knows and we don't do the "bin" any longer. I just checked again and you ARE able to gain access but you have to re-register which you indicate non-interest but the fact remains you CAN.

/ud

Mmm.. An interesting read..

If both of you, Ud and Angela, will continue in this line of reasoning, this would get you nowhere as every claim would be met with a counterclaim.. Why not meet halfway? Angela already stated that she no longer includes this type of back-linking, constructively saying that she made an HONEST mistake because people are abusing the forums with this type of link.. As to ud, you said peace out.. Then peace is given to Angela.. right? Best of luck this Christmas to you all..

Good for Angela. If you go to my site you will find next to no backlinks. The first thing lots of people do when they see a backlink system owner's sites is check the sites backlinks. Using your backlinks on your own site compromises the list. I use very few of my own although I may use backlinks that I come across that I didn't search for myself.

It might sound strange but posting proof of the effectiveness of your backlinks is actually the fastest way to give spammers your valuable work for free and destroy the list. They just use backlink checkers just like you did and then flood those sites with all kinds of garbage.

Actually, I have NEVER used a backlink on any other page of my site except my "Angela" page. And for over a year, that page had a Page Rank of 5. So did my "Backlinks" Goarticle.

This last PR Go-Round, Google reduced the PR of MANY sites, including mine. I know this because a ton of the sites I found for my list I could no longer use, as they are now PR 5, not the PR 6 they were when I found them. (I thought I was having a bad nightmare, lol. ) My site is only 2 1/2 years old. And my Angela page had a PR of 5 for at least a year. So I would say that a 1 1/2 year old site that has a page on it that's a PR 5 is pretty good; you'd know this if you looked at sites and pages that are in the PR 4 and PR 5 range. There are millions of content-filled, beautiful sites that have been around for years with this sort of Page Rank and lower.

However, the Page Rank of my own site is not my goal. My goal is getting my site/articles/blogs/whatever to the top of Google's Search Engine. And for that, these links work beautifully. Most "regular folks" (Non-IM people) never even notice the Page Rank of a website. Nor do most of them care. But they sure do care about what sites they find when they do Google Searches.
There are tons of PR 6, 7, and even 8 on page 156 and lower in Google's Search Engine. Their Page Rank isn't doing them a whole lot of good, is it...unless it's just for "bragging purposes".

Well, the problem is you don't have a very strong understanding of how backlinking and page rank work.

page rank has very little and perhaps nothing to do with SE ranking.

the style of backlinking that AngelaE promotes is to boost SE rankings, not page rank.

Gotta agree that PR has little value, and Google seems to hand it out like candy on Halloween. All my sites were PR0-1 a few months ago, but with the latest update I got 2 PR4s, 2 PR3s, a PR2, and a bunch were upped to a PR1. I'm not sure what I did, but it didn't move any of them up in the rankings. So... big whoop is pretty much what I thought.

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Just wonder with all the packs that are sold on forums, shared through other sites, linking loophole, evo, and every other profile creating tool on the face of the earth.........how does this end up being a solid long term answer for ranking. Short term maybe but with all the time and effort, its not a viable horse to ride long term. Now I guess if its just about today we all keep doing the latest fad, push buttons and hope for the short term best. We keep buying the next great tool and forgetting that once someone stops by a site they average less then 2 minutes there. I have a article in the insurance niche that's on the first page for a search term above progressives site. That to me is better then a profile link and might be more beneficial in the long run.

If the goal is to get better here in marketing on the internet we have to become better and better at what is real and more beneficial is all I am saying. Course Im a idiot so that's just my 2 cents.

I agree mixing it up is important. Many links methods are available that are long term besides articles. But starting with better basics is good also. One of the first being better content that converts better and ranks better. If we are all just short term selling each other sites we set up a month ago generating 1000 profile links using an xrummer and calling that internet marketing, I guess I missed the memo.

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Hello all. You know Angela, I've been wanting to ask you something for some time. Have you ever considered created another list that will have a limited amount of users? I get you and Paul's packets, and they are great products, they have helped me out with a lot of my sites (about 7 or 8), but with so many people using the packets, site owners (not all of course, but enough) are very quick to react to these "attacks" as they call them.

Do you think either of you would ever consider creating another, separate list each month? Thank you for your time.

Hey Tom, what is the name of the firefox addon that shows if a page is noindex or if links are no-followed? and is there an extension for google chrome also? Thanks..

I saw one of Angelas links that points to an article at GoArticles. If Google's going to penalize using Angelas backlinks then GoArticles would be in deep sh*t then?

the site is forbidden for me lol

honestly It is just one webmaster that is trying to keep spam off their site. Scare tactic! They can't ban you. Everyone would be banning each other. I know this was already mentioned but just skip them....lol. There are a ton of other sites. One bad one doesn't mean you should freak out.

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I might be being a little bit stupid here, but what has netscape got to do with anything? As far as I knew it was some out of date browser?

Anyway, lots of websites on these backlinks lists are becoming aware of so many links suddenly being posted on their sites and preventing user registration or taking away the link capability on their sites. I do agree though that the links are beneficial if you can get them and keep them on the profile-link sites.

Well it is the end for me. I used the backlink packages and found myself on this site:
Stop Forum Spam
This is where the forum masters go to check profiles etc. If you forum post links like thousands of others each month, then your name will go on the list and thats it.

There are better ways to get backlinks then to share links with thousands of others.
It worked once, but in my opinion, not anymore.

Thank you for sharing this with all of us dear

hmm 1000000 billion website pages to link on? Is this a problem? No I manage very sufficiently.

I have follow Angela's back links, wasn't really impressed with the whole thing.

You think the party's over? I sure Do Lol

If this is true then it is good news for site owners who are fighting with spam links.

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Sounds like a puffy chested threat from the legal & IT departments. As long as you are in compliance with any sites Terms of Use, regardless of where you get the links, there is no problem. If a site offers registration and you accept within their guidelines they have no actionable offenses to pursue.

Bottom line - pay attention to, and respect, the Terms of Use for any site you visit.

As I did not got the packet until the end of the month, most of the other users have already jumped in and done their links so some of the sites had either closed registration, removed link fields or changed the fields to plain text only.

That is just one site, there are plenty of others, if it eventually end, something else will take its place

LOL! It's like a bad smell!