Links Manager Warning!!!!

#1 – Biggest Trick by number of occurances
Many reciprocal link verification systems have a basic flaw that is being exploited by unscrupulous webmasters, the problem is how links are verified. Most links checkers will spider a site seeking a reciprocal link until they find it or give up and say the recip doesnt exist. This is fine and the trickersters are aware this will occur.

They create a links page(s) and link off their main index so the spider quickly locates the recip. Your checker says all is well and you approve their link, even if you manually check it at this stage it will appear that everything is normal.

The flaw is that the link does not stay visible to search spiders. After a short time (even up to two weeks) the trickster removes or redirects the link from their front page. They do NOT delete the page your link is on. BUT if the Google or Yahoo spiders hit their site its no longer within their site map or “findable” from the index.

Viola! they have you linking to them and they dont return any PR or return links to you in the Search Engines.

The flaw in the Links Manager Reciprocal checker (and many stand alone recip checkers) is that they do NOT spider the linked site each time they do a link check, they go back to the url where they found the original reciprocal link. This is done to save time and bandwidth, but it makes the check worthless. Sure, your link is still at that URL, unfortunately the only spider that will every see your link is YOUR reciprocal link checker!!!!

This is a totally fucked up trick that is being pulled with great frequency. I found this at dozens of sites that were supposedly oked by Links Manager

See next post for a variation on this that is also popular with scammers.

This is a subtle variation on trick #1 which can be performed quickly by Links Manager users to defraud their fellow link partners.

1. The culprits create a category with links manager at their site IE:

Sites Menu-Entertainment-Gambling

2. They solicit links with Gambling sites like yours or mine via Link Partners.

3. After a week or so they go back and remove the category. To our friend the Google spider their Sites Menu now looks like this

Sites Menu – Entertainment

4. Your link was already verified and the url remains active for the reciprocal link checker, but of course search engines never see your link and credit you with it!!

Note: The way I uncovered this little gem was when I manually went to the url where the reciprocal link was located I noted it was a PR0 page. I then clicked on the link path above the listings which read Sites – Entertainment – Gambling. When I went back to Entertainment on their site I found the Gambling Category had been removed!!

More Tricks to follow….

Beware of the dark forces you link hooligans!

While I don’t use Links manager, I had just been considering doing so.

Saves me some trouble here.

That explains why I’ve noticed that some of my link partners – mostly those who have non-gambling related pages (highest offenders seem to be – at least for me – sites relating to SEO)

The fact that this is possible makes Linksmanager a very lame program.

Thank you very much, professor!

:thumbsup:

?? Is there any utility a webmaster can get that will spider websites for specific links??

I don’t know if it’ll do any good (most likely not), but I’ve sent linksmanager an email, pointing out the problem and asking if they had any plans to change how they check for reciprocating links – otherwise, I’m pulling out.

:flamerFten they fail to find the recipriocal links I’ve placed for them on my website, which are often ONE step off the frontpage. What do I do then? I can’t email the bot and ask him to check again, so I just delete the links.

:flamerften I’ll get a email 3 months down the track telling me “The LM bot can’t find hte link!” when it is still there. Once again, time to delete that link, because linksmanager thinks its gone.

:flamerften I can’t find my link on their sites due to terrible default layout. (which usually passes on no PR anyway). So I delete the link, then get a email the next day telling me It can’t find their link on my site, well I couldn’t find MINE on YOURS mr Bot!

Its no coincidence that “link” is a four letter word. I’m over the whole linking link thing. Its my new F word, the L word (great show btw, keeps young single mens dreams alive).

I guess I’m also saying that some of these “Devious” tactics may also have webmaster victims at the other end of linksmanagers incompetance. LEast when I do link exchanges you speak to *me*, so if there is a problem I can at least answer. Usually if you email the webmaster of the site with linksmanager you don’t get a response.

Thats my rant for the day! ” title=”” class=”bbcode_smiley” />

Have a great Linking day!

I too use Linksmanager and I think many of the problems you have discussed here are created by the user but I do agree that linksmanager could easily fix the problem by making sure that each time it checked for the reciprocal links it spidered the site to find it. Anyway I said this to the linksmanager guys and and also let them see this thread (hope you guys dont mind, as I thought it may get them to do somthing about the problem which as a linksmanager user I want them to fix) here is their response.

Thanks for bringing this forum thread to our attention. We spent some time this afternoon going over the referenced thread and looking at the claims the author stated.

The link checkers are programmed according to a set of rules that we have been tweaking since we launched LinksManager on day one. In the early days of LinksManager, the bots checked far too frequently. Alot of webmasters didn’t like us back then and they sure did let us know about it.

We have analyzed data and determined that most webmasters do not link back in the first few hours after a link swap has been initiated by first webmaster. We have learned over the years that the majority of webmasters who would return a link do not link back until a few days have passed. We also have learned that the majority of link swaps happen in the first 5-14 days and if they don’t happen by then, chances are the other webmaster simple has no interest in linking with the first webmaster.

The link checkers are constantly being improved to check in a way that will not annoy webmasters, but will give our customers the fastest results possible. It’s a tough balance. We want to be accurate as accurate as possible but we don’t want to be bad web neighbors.

By design, the first reciprocation check for a newly submitted link is delayed about a day in order to give the other webmaster necessary time to add your link to his or her website. If the reciprocal link is not found on the first check, a few days will pass before the link is checked again for reciprocation. Each time the link is checked and is not found to be reciprocating, the time between future checks is greater and that is intentional so that we do not annoy our web neighbors. Sites that don’t link by the 4th or 5th check around the 3-4 week mark usually end up never linking back.

In 99% of the cases that we investigate perceived ‘link checker errors’ for our customers via this Helpdesk, the webmaster simply had not posted the link at the exact time that the link was checked by the LinksManager bots.

In summary, if LinksManager spidered more often, the thread you showed us would be folks complaining about how often LinksManager spiders through their sites. It’s a no win situation for us but that does not deter us. We will keep working to improve the software such as improving communications. We did this recently by adding the new WHERES MY LINK variable which displays a URL that hyperlinks to a control page where the receiving webmaster can specify location of YOUR link on THEIR website and vs versa. For more information on that new feature:
http://linksmanager.com/knowledgebase/8.html#6

The forum thread you referenced did make a note of removing links after a reciprocation agreement was made, but thats not really a LinksManager matter, that’s just bad webmastering. Anyone can do that with or without LinksManager.

Feel free to pass along some or any of this information to the folks you know on that forum that you referenced. Thank you again for bringing this forum thread to our attention. Please rest assured the link checkers work quite accurately and if they ever get bogged down, or behind, or we have a technical problem with them (it does happen from time to time), we would be the first to let you know of the matter with a quick update via your LinksManager account control panel entrance page, or a direct mailer.

Does anyone know of a program that can be used to spider for reciprocal links? I can only find programs that check an exact url which is as pointed out above useless. Linksmanager does seem to be very neighbour friendly and take care of the non-linksmanager webmasters as much as they can (sometimes more so than their own customers as you have pointed out here)

But I have in their defence always found that they do respond to support requests promptly even if they dont answer all of the questsion you ask them in full. I can also say they have made alot of improvements and do listen so I would not be suprised at all if they found a fix or way round this.

CasinoGod

I know this is a few months down the line but I’ve found a program which will spider an entire site for links. It’s at http://www.rebrandsoftware.com , click on consumer software, then scroll down to find reciprocal link checker. There’s a 15 day free trial, and then it’s $60 for the license. Been using it a bit recently and it seems to be pretty good.

Joe