Checking Your Links Too Often?
Update: see Adam Lasnik’s comment below
I read an interesting post on seoblackhat.com today saying that Adam Lasnik of Google confirmed that their “link:www.mysite.com” query i) isn’t very accurate and ii) is seen as a “spammy” request by Google. In other words, people hammering Google.com with “link:www.mysite.com” are effectively revealing themselves as ~nefariously involved~ with SEO. Is this, or will this be, one of Google’s metrics for determining sites that stink of SEO?
Related question: if “link:www.mysite.com” is a no-no, how about “site:www.mysite.com”?
Relevant Resources
- Google Seminar Description by FirstGov - what the heck, I haven’t seen anyone else link to it
- Original TheGoogleCache post
- Follow-up TheGoogleCache post
Technorati Tags: spammy, link query, adam lasnik, google
Okay, okay, this is becoming like a game of telephone.
“Did you hear that Adam said that any Webmasters who use link: more than three times in a row are *definitely* black hats, and all of their sites will get instantly moved to position 666? And their pets will develop ulcerated sores and all of their t-shirts will come out of the dryer… INSIDE OUT! :o”
Lost in all of the commotion were the core points I made in response to the question about the link operator at the seminar:
1) A TINY (albeit not unimportant) percentage of Google’s users values the link: operator.
2) We’re always trying to allocate engineering time and resources where they can do the most good.
3) We haven’t ruled out improving the link: operator in the future.
Hope this sets the record straight, or at least a bit straighter
Thanks for the comment, Adam! I hyped the “scale” of the comment a bit just to incite comments about the (available but) slippery slope of user behavior as a determinant in rankings. Good to see you’ve got a sense of humor!
One of the reasons it caught my attention is because I use the link: operator but want to stay “on the right side of the law” as it were…