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Google penalises real estate recripocal links

Posted in Real Estate Website Reviews By Earnest Young, Saturday, March 15, 2008.

In April this year, many real estate agents across America found their Google rankings had suddenly slipped causing an outcry on SEO forums across the internet. The main cause of the furore was Google's decision to manually punish estate agents using large web design and hosting companies

The company has over 30,000 real estate agents on its books and as part of the "benefit" of using their services, agents receive reciprocal links from other companies on their network.As we explained in our Introduction to Link Building, Google only wants to count "editorial citations" when passing authority. From Google's point of view, the fact that 30,000 agents were using the same company for their web hosting gave them an unfair advantage over their competitors, so Matt Cutts manually went in and scrubbed the value of these links.Google did not do this algorithmically, so all reciprocal links are not worthless (although they have been significantly devalued recently), but it demonstrates their intentions.

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Submitted by on March 15, 2008 - 1:20pm.

Good post. Seems pretty logical. Most folks up on SEO have stopped bothering with reciprocal links.

Joe

Austin Real Estate | Davenport Ranch Texas Real Estate

 
Submitted by henry b. nathan on April 21, 2009 - 5:44am.

I personally noticed something like this on my website, although I wasn't using any large web design company. My website is hard coded and very "manual". Even though my pagerank slipped down, I didn't see decline in search positions. That's weird.

Henry

Florida real estate

The Beach Club Condos

 
Submitted by George Fanucci on April 21, 2009 - 10:06am.

Google PageRank (TM) has some importance, but your search-engine results pages, for your specific target keywords, are far more important.

Your PageRank is a function of inbound links, relevance, and reputation.

Reputation is recursively conferred by the quality and quantity of inbound links, and the reputation, quality and quantity of their inbound links. It's regulated by the hundreds of factors evaluated by the Google PageRank algorithm. The PageRank is recomputed periodically, and the algorithm is updated periodically. Google has all the power over your results, but when you play by their rules, you can improve your results.

It's a logarithmic scale, it takes about 10x more inbound links to get to the next level.

Get More Real Estate SEO Info Here.

T.L.C. for your web-presence and Real Estate SEO: www.iNetMore.com

 
Submitted by on April 21, 2009 - 11:00am.

@Joe - Reciprocal links based on merit or partnerships are fine, so you shouldn't stop reciprocal linking. But you should stop building links pages and reciprocal linking strictly to build PR.

@Henry - You are not experiencing the same thing that Earnest describes. As publicly explained by Matt Cutts, the PR shown in the toolbar and what is internally shown at Google can be 2 very different things. To see your true PR, sign your site up with Google Webmaster Tools and click "Statistics" > "Crawl stats". Low = PR 1 - 4, Med = PR 5 - 7, and High = PR 8 - 10.

@George - Your thinking is very spot on, but your terminology is a little off. PR is part of Google's algorithm, it is not the algorithm. Reputation (better know as Authority / Trust) and Relevancy are part of that same algorithm and more important (I believe) then PR. I can also confirm your theory (through my testing) that on page target keywords (a.k.a. optimization) are more important then PR.

--
Justin Britt
Head-Web-Head
Hawaii Life Real Estate Services

 
Submitted by Bob Wilson on April 21, 2009 - 11:20am.

Justin Is flat out wrong. At PubCon Matt Cutts has been explicit about reciprocal links. No follow them and your fine. Don't and you risk a penalty.

Bob Wilson
amounted

 
Submitted by Tony Spencer on April 21, 2009 - 11:28am.

Matt Cutts says a lot of things to put the fear in you.

Moderate reciprocal linking is perfectly fine. Its all about appearing natural. If 50% of your links are recips than, yes you are pushing the limit. If a small percentage are recips, you are fine.

Justin is completely right on this point.

 
Submitted by Pasadena Real Estate Agent on April 21, 2009 - 11:31am.

I think this is great news because some companies charge so much money for seo and heep a monopoly on the rankings for real estate results. "They should do something about Yahoo Real Estate" :) but if they start doing that what will be next... no results for peanuts.....

The Manzo Team
RE/MAX Tri-City

Remax Pasadena

626 296-2900

Pasadena Real Estate | Pasadena homes for sale |

 
Submitted by on April 21, 2009 - 11:42am.

Bob-

Then I guess a whole lotta blog rolls are gonna bring a whole lotta blogs down.

I can find recips all over the web. And as such they work to a point so long as the recips keep happening.
The problem is you bring juice in and you leak it right out. The minute you stop the recips,you start losing juice.
You bring people in and the link invites them right out. But I have seen to many work to say anything other than it works.

It is the latter reasons that make it much more compellingto not recip link. Besides, it really uglifies a website.

Tim O'Keefe
Real Estate SEO
http://www.SpiderWorkz.com
http://www.HouseBlogger.com

 
Submitted by on April 21, 2009 - 11:47am.

@Bob - Great idea, let's ask Matt Cutts:

In this post by Matt Cutts on his own blog he states,

"Reciprocal links by themselves aren’t automatically bad, but we’ve communicated before that there is such a thing as excessive reciprocal linking."

If you are participating in link exchanges solely for the purpose of manipulating PR, this will be devalued and not help you in Google, and as Bob states put you at risk for a penalty.

If however, you are a real estate agent in Los Angeles and you refer clients to another agent in San Diego (and vise versa) it is fine to link to one another. This is because you work together and you are giving a link as a vote of merit.

Bob will most likely come back and disagree with me. I will not participate in this argument any longer. I would suggest asking the question at Google Webmaster Central and to read Matt Cutts' blog and decide for yourself.

--
Justin Britt
Head-Web-Head
Hawaii Life Real Estate Services, LLC
www.HawaiiLife.com

 
Submitted by Bob Wilson on April 21, 2009 - 12:02pm.

Justin,
You are still wrong. Why dont you ask many of the agents from REW and AA who saw their sites penalized by Google?

I dont need to read Matt's blog. I have spoken to Matt about this myself in front of several dozen people. He was very clear about reciprocal links, especially within the real estate industry. He brought up sites during sites reviews and specifically mentioned reciprocal links.

Go on the REW forum and make your argument there. You will find numerous agents who have first hand knowledge of recip linking penalties.

Keep giving loser advice though. I'll sit back and watch from this point on.

Bob Wilson
San Diego Homes.com
Home Sales San Diego.com

 
Submitted by Bob Wilson on April 21, 2009 - 12:05pm.

FWIW, Matt didnt buy the referral argument as he knows that most agents get referral fees. That doesnt happen with reciprocal link.

Your argument = FAIL

Bob Wilson
San Diego Homes.com
Home Sales San Diego.com

 
Submitted by henry b. nathan on April 21, 2009 - 2:09pm.

Let me add something. I will not mention the name of the site. But I have seen a Florida real estate site high-ranked by Google, with hundreds of dubious links coming from blogs that were evidently fake. I mean blogs with no content at all, blogs with just a name, just made up to send a link to this site. They had undoubtedly put up a lot of work in setting up this bunch of blogs and it was outrageous that Google couldn't see the manipulation and spam, which any individual can easily detect. But I guess we have to live with it.

I have also seen links from recognized websites who evidently charge for their "advertising" which means in essence to shoot dozens or hundreds of links to whichever website that can spend some big money.

This evidently harms the Google positions of honest sites who strive to be good information sources. But I guess, it's how the game is played.

I understand and appreciate Google's efforts to rein in the abuses, and I feel that they are on the right track. I guess it has to be done step by step and it's a dynamic game.

Henry

Florida Real Estate

The Beach Club Condos in Hallandale

 
Submitted by henry b. nathan on April 22, 2009 - 7:33am.

I don't think you're being fair. I don't troll year-old blog posts for the kind of purpose you say. I was worried by some changes that I have noticed in search engines' behavior in March/April 2009.

I searched a blog with this kind of concern and found Inman's. I didn't honestly notice the date of the last comment. But by the follow-up that I had on my own post, I can see that some people have similar concerns. Inman's is a well-known real estate site, frequented mostly by real estate professionals and I don't go around posting on all kind of blogs just for the sake of getting links.

As far as the "florida real estate" hyperlink, my hope is always to get some good real estate partners and some referrals from real estate colleagues in other regions. And no better forum than a real-estate-related blog.

I don't understand at all what you mean by:

"Having your name or blog name in dozens of blog rolls doesn't artificially impact search results.
Having in dozens of blog rolls does".

Actually, and if you read carefully of of my comments, I was complaining about some webmasters who set up dozens of blogs which doesn't have any purpose or content, and just exist for the purpose of hosting a link to the spamming website. In all cases, I don't have my website in dozens of blog rolls, as you suggest.

I strongly agree on search-engines ranking on the basis of the real content of a website and its value to the consumer, or as an information tool.
I have done some research on many of the best ranked real estate websites in the US and my findings are sometimes disturbing. By the nature of real estate business, its links-factor is of a different value than other type of sites, and has been frequently abused.

I can feel that Google is conscious of the problem and constantly trying to address it. I don't know their methods and algorithms, but in certain way, I trust their judgment.

 
Submitted by Mack McMillan on May 7, 2009 - 3:56pm.

I for one am happy with the fact that reciprocal linking for real estate sites is a dead stick. It took entirely too much time to manage. Time that would have been much better spent writing fresh content.

Bob is absolutely correct about Google not accepting the BS of “Referral Partners” exchanging links. And yes Justin a lot of Top Ranking Agents are getting away with it currently. That doesn’t mean that they will forever. JM can attest that what worked yesterday may get you penalized today and he has paid a bitter price for this lesson.

Let’s call it what it truly is. Reciprocal linking is a link scheme period and solely implemented to manipulate the SERPS. There is NO legitimate reason for an Agent in Gotham City, USA to have a link on his/her website to and Agent in Las Vegas. Especially on the Home page! And I guess it is just a coincidence that the Las Vegas Agent has a Home page link back to the Gotham City Agent’s website right?

And I hope that it does not sound like I am flaming anyone. That is not my intent. But I won’t hide the fact that I am celebrating the demise of reciprocal links for real estate sites.

Mack McMillan

Las Vegas Homes

Real Estate Websites

 
Submitted by on May 8, 2009 - 7:50am.

"so Matt Cutts manually went in and scrubbed the value of these links.Google did not do this algorithmically"

If this is true, it's nice to know that the "Google Gods" will intervine with a human touch & not strictly use the "Hal of 2001 Space Odyssy" approach.

Rich Johnson
360-319-3267
http://www.johnsonteamrealestate.com
http://www.johnsonteamrealestate.com/blog/

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