thanks for the link but that doesnt really anwswer my question.
why is this other site linking to mine? there doesnt really appear to be any substance on this other site. just a bunch of links to elsewhere. what are they up to? why would they do this?
Search engines, notably Google, use link relationships to determine the quality of a site and thus to rank the site. Seems like you already figured that out, at least in a general way. Links on your site are good for the spam site and visa versa, at least for until Google notices and punishes one or both of you. Why? To fake having content on the site, to ramp up impressions for advertising– essentially cheating, to ramp up a domain’s price hoping to sell it, all of the above and more, I’m sure.
but on what grounds would they penalize the site that is linked to?
but on what grounds would they penalize the site that is linked to?
Participation. You can’t control what the other site owner does, of course, so its a matter of controlling what you can. You can control which links appear and remain on your site. If you let the pingbacks show on your site, which they do by default (I believe), you could be considered to be participating in the scam, since your site would be directing traffic to the other site. Just look at the source of the pingbacks and delete them if the originating site looks questionable. That should keep you safe. That’s how I understand it at least. It isn’t an authoritative opinion in any way.
You’d have to be getting a LOT of pingbacks for that to matter. Most of the time, one or two won’t effect you, especially since the nofollow tag is flagged on WordPress comments and pingbacks.
so basically as long as I do NOT approve the pingback, and do NOT link back to this other site, I don’t have to worry about anything, right?
Yep 🙂 Delete ’em and you’re good to go.
