Hi Ken,

> There is quite a bit of talk lately about
> Google and other search engines penalizing
> sites that use Links Companies to obtain or
> list links to your site.

They may not be "penalizing" sites... just adding less weight to the lower quality of reciprocal links generated by these links companies.

> Does anyone know the details of the actual
> facts here ? Obviously, no business wants to
> be banned by search engines for lack of
> understanding.

Very true.

*snip*

What
> they do is create a page for your website
> that lists links you find in an organized
> way. That seems to be harmless, or are the
> engines/directories thinking something else
> ?

Scenario one:

John's website sells pooper-scoopers for Iguanas. He has toiled for countless hours. Researching other related sites, building relationships with the webmasters, gained respect and become known as one of the worlds most prominent Iguana pooper-scooper experts. The other site owners, because they respect John and value his opinions/information/products, have included a link back to his site. There are 50 links in all and John gets a small but steady stream of qualified visitors through the links as a result.

He also has the #1 position in the major engines under several search terms related to Iguanas and pooper-scoopers.

Scenario two:

John puts up a site on - you guessed it - pooper scoopers for Iguanas. He's looking for a quick fix for his low traffic problem so he joins a whole slew of links page programs because he heard that link popularity weighs heavily with the search engines. He sits back and waits for the #1 positions and the orders to flow in.

His link is included on about 11,452,909 pages of links. These pages include links to sites on everything from Asses (yes, I mean Donkeys) to Zookeeping. 99.9% of the links are unrelated to Iguanas or pooper-scoopers. No-one visits his site through the links, and he can't find his site in the major SE's. John wonders why he has no orders coming in.

In Scenario one, John's site is only linked to and from sites that are Relevant to his own in some way. Search Engines, and more importantly, the People who search for information in the engines are looking for Relevant info on the topic they are interested in.

Search Engines use what is known as an "algorythm". A process of determining the quality of relevancy of a website to what a person types into their search box. This algorythm is used to most acurately present the searcher with the highest quality of information possible.

If the search engines algorythm is now adding less weight to the quantity of links in the link popularity aspect of their algorythm, they know that the quality of information presented to the searcher has been in some way comprimised by the onslaught of linkspage companies.

Search engines are a business like any other. If the quality of their product (relevant information) is comprimised, they loose viewers. If they loose viewers, they loose ad impressions, and in turn loose money.

Changing their algorythms is just another form of Quality Control.

Hope this sheds some light for you.

Paul Short