SEO 2020 FORUM

[stardad]

I recently exchanged several links with an individual and now my linking script is saying it can't find the links, although they are still showing on his website. I think I have found the problem, but would appreciate some expert advice before I take any action.

Since the script first accepted the links, I am assuming a change has been made in the code. This is how it appears:

<li><B><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<a name="816"></a>

<A href="/cgi-bin/visit.cgi?id=best-stress-relief.us" target=new onmouseover="window.status='http://www.best-stress-relief.us'; return true" onclick="window.status='http://www.best-stress-relief.us'; return true" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true">100% Natural Depression, Anxiety, Stress Relief</A>

</FONT> </B>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px"><FONT
face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>

This all natural product effectively addresses the diverse and debilitating symptoms of STRESS, ANXIETY, and DEPRESSION. Non-prescription Relagen has no side effects.
<br /><font color="#336600"><i>http://www.best-stress-relief.us</i></font>
</FONT> </P></li>

and this the the robots.txt from that website:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /_private

It seems to me that the robots.txt does not allow the cgi-bin to be spidered, but "cgi-bin/visit.cgi?" has has been added at the beginning of the link. Am I right, the link cannot be spidered by search engines, but will show on the website?

Any input appreciated.

Thanks,
John

[sidhale]

Hi John,

You're right. The site you have swapped links with appears to be "gaming" you.

Their link is an internal link to their cgi-bin/visit.cgi page, which then redirects to your site. If someone clicks on the link, you will get the traffic from their site, but the search engines will never see the link to your site from them.

You're being cheated, and this was done conciously. The search engines think that they have a one-way backlink from your site to theirs, and you get NO credit for an incoming link. You could contact them and let them know that this is unacceptable - but they don't care. They never intended a fair trade. The best option is to just remove their link from your own site.

sid

[stardad]

Thanks Sid, I was hoping you would catch my post, I respect your advice...Happy New year. Just for laughs, get this...

When I sent an email to say my script couldn't find the link(s) (before I looked into it more closely), this was the reply:

Hi, John!~~

I'm sincerely sorry about that, bcz there was a hard earthquake, so I can't open the foreign sites, and I can't open my sites FTP-----bcz the server was set in U.S.

Can you show me the urls which I was listed your backlinks and which of your sites' links were gone??? I'll ask my colleague in U.S to correct your links. OK??

I hope it would not delay your works. Sincerely sorry again!~~~