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Excessive Linking and Real Estate

Every web site owner or webmaster wants their web pages to appear at the top of search engine results, but many take things a bit too far, engaging in a practice now called "link spam".   

LinkSpam is excessive linking solely or mostly for the purpose of manipulating higher popularity for your web page, and therefore -- higher Search Engine Results.  From a search engine's point of view, link spam skews results to favor better-linked sites instead of sites with the most useful content.  Since a search engine's goal is to provide the most useful content for its users, they have been working to minimize the benefits of link spam.

...and assessing penalties.

Beginnings of LinkSpam

In the pre-Google days of the web, search engines performed poorly.  The search engines didn't mind too much because as the web began to grow they eventually developed into "portals" and sold banner ads.  If a visitor couldn't find what he wanted in the search results, he or she would click on the ad.  Ads generated revenue.  Search results did not.

Site owners that couldn't afford banner ads listed themselves in directories and appealed to sites similar to their own, requesting a "link" from one site to the other.   The webmaster would review the requester's site and if that site would benefit his visitors, the link would be granted.  Often, they would email back saying they had linked up, but hey, how about linking back to us, too?

That would then be a reciprocal link.

Of course, some sites would link "just because" those links were good for their visitors, whether a reciprocal link was granted or not.

Then along came Google.

Prior to Google, search engines analyzed only the content of a web page, including meta-tags for page title, description and keywords.  Because of the massive amount of unorganized data, search engine results were hit and miss.  A web searcher looking for real estate in a specific city could easily find himself looking at a list of restaurants.

Google did things differently and began to dominate search.

First, Google planned to index many more pages than previous search engines.  Second, they realized that the massive amount of data wasn't really unorganized.  Sites on similar topics tended to link to one another.  All Google had to do was create a search algorithm that took these links into account when organizing results.  Third, Google realized some pages were more important than others.

The measure of a page's importance was determined by something new called PageRank.  Pages with lots of incoming links earned a higher PageRank than relatively unlinked pages.  Links from pages with higher PageRank counted more than links from unlinked pages with low PageRank.  Sites with high PageRank became authorities.  Google valued links from authorities in determining search engine results.

At the time, it was very difficult to convince real estate agents they should be linking to off-site pages and web sites, but there were some forward-thinking agents who were ahead of their time.  As their sites started popping to the top in Google's rankings, other agents and their web site developers began to understand the value of incoming, outgoing, and reciprocal links.

The thing about success is that others will copy you.  It is one of the rules you learn in any marketing class in college.

Going Too Far

In addition to obtaining links from directories and real estate information sites, agents began linking to one another aggressively.  It became easier to simply exchange links amongst each other rather than do the research and obtain truly valuable links from directories and authorites. 

Reciprocal linking amongst agents began to spread like a fungus, but they wanted more.  Some agents began using special link-generating software that helped them gather and maintain reciprocal links. 

To satisfy their clients' desires, real estate web developers began to suggest agent-to-agent linking as a way to develop PageRank and improve search engine results.  Some site developers offered special marketing plans to develop reciprocal links and directory links.

Reciprocal peer-to-peer linking exploded and transformed into monster networks of links managed by real estate web site developers on behalf of their clients.  Agents could generate PageRank without effort by entering the network.  Improved search engine results were easier to obtain.

Not every site can be number one, but for sites that did make it to the top of Google rankings and effectively converted visitors to prospects and then into clients, the money rolled in.  Many had to hire additional staff and "teams" of supporting agents to help with the business generated from their web sites.

Link spam worked.  Life was good at the top.

Voices in the Wilderness

As early as September of 1998, Larry Page was speaking publicly about sites that tried to fool search engines into higher rankings -- and that Google would develop plans to combat that in the future.  At webmaster conferences, Matt Cutts of Google and other panelists openly discussed how they thought real estate sites abused linking strategies and engaged in link spam.

There are some agents and experts focusing on real estate that understand search engines very well.  They offered up advice on how not to be obvious when creating link networks between agents.  One suggestion was to make sure your site was not on the same IP (Internet Protocol) address with other real estate sites.  Others warned about avoiding red flags in how you worded site navigation to your links pages or where you placed the links to pages that listed other agent sites.  Some suggested that  agents put "no-follow" tags on their links.

There were a few voices on real estate forums and listservs that explained the future dangers of overly aggressive agent-to-agent or peer-to-peer linking.

Very few listened because linkspam worked.  Plus, even if there would be a penalty in the future, no one could predict when that future would be.  One year from now?  Three years?  Why give up something that worked in anticipation of a penalty that may or may not occur.... someday?

Which makes sense.

Besides, its just networking.  Right?

Agents Get Defensive

When something works, no one wants to give it up. 

Agents argue that their link networks are not linkspam.  Search engines just don't understand how real estate works, they say.  After all, agents constantly network with one another through relocation networks -- and this is no different.  All we have to do, they suggest, is educate the search engines about real estate.

To a major extent, it is true that search engines don't really understand why real estate is a different animal from travel, hotels, mortgages, or buying books on the web.  That doesn't make them bad, it just makes them like all others who aren't in the real estate business.  No non-professional actually "gets" it, which is one reason why many folks think it is so easy to sell their home by owner or they think "foreclosures" means a great steal.  It may be impossible for search engines to ever understand the real estate profession, because so few non-professionals really do.

Search engines do understand some things, however.

Prior to the development of PageRank, very few real estate agents linked to one another.  When online behavior suddenly changes due to a web innovation like PageRank, it makes things startlingly clear.  Agents aren't really interested in sending one another traffic, but they do eagerly seek the benefits of PageRank. 

Additionally, when an agent makes the "networking" argument, you could probably visit their site and discover that the navigation to those "links to other agents" pages is not strategically placed in a prime location on the home page.  It is tucked away somewhere difficult to find.  Sometimes it is in very small type or has a misleading name like "resources".  If agents were genuinely interested in sending traffic to one another instead of just trading PageRank, site navigation would more clearly point out the "links to other agents" pages.

Besides, if someone gets to your site by typing in "Seattle real estate," they probably aren't looking for an agent in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. 

Some agent will always say, "But I sold a house to a client who came to me because of one of those links!"  That happens.  Even Matt Cutts (Google's anti-spam guy) doesn't say you should not link to any agents.  At PubCon (a search engine optimization convention for webmasters) in Las Vegas last November (2006), he suggested that if you are linking to another agent, wherever they are located, you should probably know that agent personally and have a relationship with him or her.

Linking "just" for the purposes of building PageRank is no longer acceptable to Google, even though for many -- it still works.

When the Hammer Falls

In the smackdown against linkspam, Yahoo acted first, directly penalizing members of linkspam networks coordinated by a few choice real estate website developers.  They took action in late 2004, October 2005, and April 2006.  Real estate agent websites disappeared wholesale from the top tier of Yahoo Search.

Yet while Yahoo is the second largest search engine on the web, they aren't Google.  Agents who had optimized their sites well generated most of their traffic from Google.  Sure, Yahoo's penalty was annoying, but it wasn't a major disaster.

Then, in April and May of 2007, Google acted against agent-to-agent network linkspam for the first time. Some experts estimate that between 70 to 200 top-ranked web sites from at least two real estate website developers were penalized.  Others believe the number was higher.

It is going to get worse.  How fast?  When? 

No one knows. 

But if you have high Google rankings and engage in what Google thinks is linkspam, you could be a target and not know it.  According to one theory, Google finds out about linkspam sites via their Spam Report page.  If someone reports you as a link spammer and Google agrees, you could receive a manually applied penalty.  Perhaps it will be a temporary penalty or perhaps you may have to submit a reinclusion request once you fix the problem. 

This is new.  Perhaps Google is just trying to scare the bejeezus out of everyone by penalizing a few, or perhaps it is the beginning of a trend.

As for when algorithm changes may begin penalizing sites automatically?

Once again, no one knows.  What we do know is that the real estate industry is in the crosshairs and has been for at least a year and a half.

copyright 2007, Terry Light