Forget jcpenney.com How to create a tool to discover websites that sell links? and/or CHEAT to search engines.

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[saibose]

I dont think there is a tool which can crawl the whole wbe for such linking practices. If there was, the company that investigated jcpenney's case for NYT would have a very simple task at hand.

But, this is something that someone must build.

If you see these websites, they have a legacy. They have been around for 4+ years and whoever is incharge of SEO there at the point of time did something shady. Now, big websites like jcpenney have people leaving and joining them. So, its a huge exercise to clean up the mess for the guy who replaces the old guy. And yes, there are decision and process bottlenecks that come into play.

As a result, we see that websites like jcpenney have such links. Its not because they maybe actively doing it right now, but it has been done by some shady guy who did it when the website was not that popular and the whole management was breathing down his neck for traffic acceleration.

Of course, this would be a very different opinion that I have, but I think that Matt Cutts and team must build something to detect such practices in an algorithm. With caffeine, its very possible to detect such issues in quick time.

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[saibose]

Its not an excuse my friend. Its a black hat technique and I am against it. Big time. But this is what happens in 60% of big websites. They have crazy amount of revisions and stuff and they themselves dont know 100% what all is already there.

Google already has a filter called the Baynesian filter (used in a customized version by Google) to target such websites. The potential problem is how to recognize such websites. I think that its time Google built the functionality.

Increased devaluation is the only way.

[saibose]

Exactly, Google is known to have a hard time figuring out what a spammy link would look like.They cannot distinguish what is the difference between an affiliate link and a SEO link unless you have campaign IDs in the URL or some nofollow attribute. Sad, but true. Google doesnt have a problem of relevance, there are a billion other websites to show for a particular query.

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[TECHeGO]

Corruption or unethical practices can be found in any industry so it's no surprise to find it flourishing within ours. Even though there's no forward facing tools to uncover these practices doesn't this fall under the responsibiliy of the search engines and their spam departments? Sure it's fun to uncover 'dirty laundry' and air it to the world, however, I believe there is a fine line between ouster and becoming a gossip magazine so to speak. I believe that if you are attempting to rank for a term and you find that your competitor is cheating and in turn is ranking above you because of it then action should be taken. So is it really worth the time and effort to become a self proclaimed watchdog just so you can garner more hits to a ousting blog post?

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[nayuen]

My response might be a little late, but this is how I see it:

In the absence of any quality signals in the search landscape, the algorithm WON'T PENALIZE YOU for farmed links completely. I wish I had saved the test, but it's kind of like a blog comment, even for a nofo. If you have 4 different sites attempting to rank for a KW and the ONLY SIGNAL is a nofo comment - then that site with the comment wins. I COULD BE ABSOLUTELY WRONG, but I've tested this myself for the KW "pyoniz".

I suspect the same thing is happening with affiliate links for specific KWs with low quality search signals. In the absence of quality signals, Google will give microscopic weight to bad signals - and eventually it all adds up. FYI the bigger your name and the higher your PR the EASIER it is to engage in black hat SEO.

[super99]

I'm just going to take a second and empathize. I've been noticing some big names in my sphere doing a whole bunch of text link buying and they are still ranking.

And I know they have been reported too, numerous times - I've read it in other forums... I think it's a big problem that does need to be dealt with a bit better than it is now.

[JeanYates]

I have over 250,000 links into my site that I did not ask for, did not buy, and frankly, do not want. Some are from pages covered with links, some are from what look like "normal" websites.

I'm afraid these crazy links are going to destroy my credibility with google. My site has been up since 1997, and I've never had anything like this happen before. If I follow your argument correctly, you are saying that I should be blacklisted?

But I did nothing NOTHING to get these links in. There are links from about sixty sites into my site - links I asked for and from high quality sites. The rest are all just there, I had nothing to do with it.

Any expertise you could offer would be deeply appreciated. I wake up having nightmares about these links.