A quick update: A lot of folks are e-mailing/IMing/Tweeting me that I 'outed' FTD. I didn't out anyone. The New York Times sent 6000 suspect links to Google a while ago. And the Seattle Times contacted Google while writing this story. All I'm doing is analyzing what folks said in light of the link profile. And I'm saying they're either, uh, modifying the truth, or somehow unaware of a massive link purchase program in their company. Could've been an SEO company working for them 2 years ago. Could be the one they've got now. I have no idea. But seriously, you're telling me they got those links without paying? You may have a fever - take your temperature.
First, here's the short version of the story, in a graphic:
Well, duh.
I’m not that interested in outing people for bad practices any more. Do what you want. But I took a look at FTD.com’s link profile and it’s just great for a Saturday morning chuckle. I’m pretty sure that Google already knows FTD is spamming the crap out of the rankings. Plus, post-Panda, I’m not sure how much buying dozens of totally fake links accomplishes.
FTD’s link profile: Liar, liar, pants on fire
In the Seattle Times article, FTD said “the vast majority of its links were on websites owned by FTD.” So, I cranked up OpenSiteExplorer and looked at 10,000 of ’em.
Of the 10,000 links, only 500 or so come from pages that mention ‘FTD’ or ‘Flowers’ in the title tags.
A quick sampling of the other 9,500 sites shows hosting companies, dead sites on hosting company servers, security software/spam sites and other fun stuff. I’m not going to list those sites. Google can sniff ’em out if they want to.
Really? FTD? You’re going into the hosting business? And the security software business? And you’re going to start selling social games?
Uh-huh. And I've just diversified into adult entertainment.
Benefit of the doubt
I’m not an unreasonable person. I’m sure a lot of the 9,500 links are from news, financial, dating and other sites that might have some tangential relationship with FTD and flowers. But more than half? I kinda doubt it. So that means FTD has a link profile that’s only about 50% purchased, or that they’re the luckiest web site in link building history.
Plus, I took a look at a few of the links. Again, I’m not going to show the links and give away the sites that are selling. But guys, you could at least try to look like you’re not selling links. When you put a table at the bottom of the page, outlined in green, with five neatly outlined links and nothing else around them, you might as well just say:
| Yo Google | I am | selling | links | Neener Neener |
Have a little pride.
What does it meaaannnn?
For Google, these links may be meaningless: They might have it all handled now with the Panda update. We’ll see about that.
For FTD, well, you might want to clean that crap up, before the New York Times writes about it, embarrasses Google and gets you banned.
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- Follow me on Twitter
- The Real World Unscary Guide to SEO Copywriting
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