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Link Exchange Sites: Why Does Google Like Them?
Last year many of us webmasters were half expecting Google to devalue back links from free link exchange sites but they surprised us and left them intact. Buy why? After all nobody clicks into those links they are only put there to help search engine results. Which sounds like “manipulating the search engines” right? And Google has always frowned on that so why allow all these link trades to give websites a higher placement?
Google see’s basically two types of websites out there: Sites that are current, updated and regularly cared for in general, and sites which have not been edited since the internet stone age. They do not want an old site about “Al Gore For President” to take a high spot in Googles results when it is OLD outdated information. Instead Google wants that spot to go for a site about current information. Google has long ago removed all the “easy” ways to make your site go higher in the s.e.r.p.s. (search engine results pages) and now all that remain is link exchanges.
I believe Googe looks at a sites link pages as “an indication of effort recently put forth” and considers that webmaster as an active webmaster who is obviously spending a lot of time and effort on his or her website, and therefore Google can safely assume that the site is fresh and current. So if they look at a site that has the most link trades, then they know that webmaster has done the most work, and he who works the hardest should always win right? All this link trading really helps to show Google who is seriously working on their site and who isn’t. (not that this is Googles only indicator of webmaster effort but in my opinion this is one of the reasons they allow it)
Time will tell if Google continues to let link exchanges affect s.e.r.p.s. position but I predict that they will leave it mostly as it is.
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