Why I dislike 3-way linking requests

I mentioned yesterday that I don't like 3-way linking requests well why?

Well people think that it's tricking the search engines and anything you do to purposely trick search engines can get you into trouble with them, they don't like it. It can cause you to be banned, although I don't think that 3-way linking alone will get you banned, yet...

But why do people like it? Well they think that if site A links to site B, site B links to C and C links to A then search engines will think that all 3 have 1 way links. Clever? Not really. If search engines can spot 2 sites that have the same content hidden away on different pages, then I'm sure they can start to spot 3 way links. It must be easy to see that all of the sites that site A links to all point to site C. They might then class these as cheating the system...

What does really annoy me is the quality of 3 way link requests. Usually it's an SEO firm who are building for a client and want a link from your home page to the client's site, in return for a link from a directory they have set up somewhere. Not really an equal exchange. If they are being paid to link build, then they are only really interested in what happens now - that's how they are getting paid. The directory site (site A) has been set up just to hold their links out. If it gets banned from Google, they just create a new directory and start again. This means that your site, site B, isn't gaining from the relationship.

And what heppens when their customer decides that the £50 per month or whatever can be better spent elsewhere? They just delete all links from the directory to start again. Do they tell you they have done this, probably not. This leaves you linking to the customer, with nothing in exchange.

At least with reciprocal linking you are linking to and getting a link from the site that has an interest in getting a better rating. With 3 way linking, the site linking to you doesn't have to matter. It's only there as link bait.

So if you ever email be a 3 way linking request, guess what - I'll be ignoring it. If you are that desperate for 1-way links, then get to work linking another way.