Link farm

On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of

websites that all hyperlink to other sites in the group
for the purpose of increasing SEO rankings.[1] In
graph theoretic terms, a link farm is a clique. Although
some link farms can be created by hand, most are
created through automated programs and services. A
link farm is a form of spamming the index of a web
search engine (sometimes called spamdexing). Other
link exchange systems are designed to allow individual
websites to selectively exchange links with other
relevant websites and are not considered a form of
spamdexing.

Search engines require ways to confirm page

relevancy. A known method is to examine for one-way
links coming directly from relevant websites. The A diagram of a link farm. Each circle represents a
process of building links should not be confused with website, and each arrow represents a pair of
being listed on link farms, as the latter requires hyperlinks between two websites.
reciprocal return links, which often renders the overall
backlink advantage useless. This is due to oscillation,
causing confusion over which is the vendor site and which is the promoting site.

History
Link farms were first developed by search engine optimizers (SEOs) in 1999 to take advantage of the
Inktomi search engine's dependence upon link popularity. Although link popularity is used by some search
engines to help establish a ranking order for search results, the Inktomi engine at the time maintained two
indexes. Search results were produced from the primary index, which was limited to approximately 100
million listings. Pages with few inbound links fell out of the Inktomi index on a monthly basis.

Inktomi was targeted for manipulation through link farms because it was then used by several independent
but popular search engines. Yahoo!, then the most popular search service, also used Inktomi results to
supplement its directory search feature. The link farms helped stabilize listings, primarily for online business
Websites that had few natural links from larger, more stable sites in the Inktomi index.

Link farm exchanges were at first handled on an informal basis, but several service companies were
founded to provide automated registration, categorization, and link page updates to member Websites.

When the Google search engine became popular, search engine optimizers learned that Google's ranking
algorithm depended in part on a link-weighting scheme called PageRank. Rather than simply count all
inbound links equally, the PageRank algorithm determines that some links may be more valuable than
others, and therefore assigns them more weight than others. Link farming was adapted to help increase the
PageRank of member pages.
However, the link farms became susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous webmasters who joined the
services, received inbound linkage, and then found ways to hide their outbound links or to avoid posting
any links on their sites at all. Link farm managers had to implement quality controls and monitor member
compliance with their rules to ensure fairness.

Alternative link farm products emerged, particularly link-finding software that identified potential reciprocal
link partners, sent them template-based emails offering to exchange links, and created directory-like link
pages for Websites, in the hope of building their link popularity and PageRank. These link farms are
sometimes considered a spamdexing strategy.

Search engines countered the link farm movement by identifying specific attributes associated with link
farm pages and filtering those pages from indexing and search results. In some cases, entire domains were
removed from the search engine indexes in order to prevent them from influencing search results.

Blog network
A private blog network (PBN) is a group of blogs that are owned by the same entity. A blog network can
either be a group of loosely connected blogs, or a group of blogs that are owned by the same company. The
purpose of such a network is usually to promote other sites outside the network and therefore increase the
search engine rankings or advertising revenue generated from online advertising on the sites the PBN links
to.

In September 2014, Google targeted private blog networks (PBNs) with manual action ranking penalties.[2]
This served to dissuade search engine optimization and online marketers from using PBNs to increase their
online rankings. The "thin content" warnings are closely tied to Panda which focuses on thin content and
on-page quality. PBNs have a history of being targeted by Google and therefore may not be the safest
option. Since Google is on the search for blog networks, they are not always linked together. In fact,
interlinking your blogs could help Google, and a single exposed blog could reveal the whole blog network
by looking at the outbound links.

A blog network may also refer to a central website, such as WordPress, where a user creates an account and
is then able to use their own blog. The created blog forms part of a network because it uses either a
subdomain or a subfolder of the main domain, although in all other ways it can be entirely autonomous.
This is also known as a hosted blog platform and usually uses the free WordPress Multisite software.

Hosted blog networks are also known as Web 2.0 networks, since they became more popular with the rise
of the second phase of web development.

See also
Click farm
Cloaking
Content farm
Doorway pages
Keyword stuffing
Methods of website linking
Scraper site
Server farm
Spam blog
Spam in blogs
 Strongly connected component
Web guide

References
1. "link farming" (https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/link_farming.html).
www.webopedia.com. 16 January 2002. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
2. "Google Targets Sites Using Private Blog Networks With Manual Action Ranking Penalties"
(http://searchengineland.com/google-targets-sites-using-private-blog-networks-manual-actio
n-ranking-penalties-204000). 2014-09-23. Retrieved 2015-12-14.

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