| Frequently Asked Questions |
 Why should I join Link2me.com?
How do I use Link2Me.com?
Is a link to Link2Me.com required?
Do I have to link to people who request a link?
How long does it take for my website to be approved?
I'm going on holiday, how can I stop people requesting links for a while?
What is an Advanced site?
How much is the Advanced site upgrade and how often am I billed?
I am having trouble verifying a link is on my website
What type of sites are allowed to join?
If I reject a link request, can they request it again?
Why can I not see the 'Add to cart' button in 'Link search'?
How long does it take to approve my site for inclusion in the directory?
Why is my site not visible in the directory?
Is there a time limit to respond to requests?
Can I change what emails I receive?
Can my linkpage be on a different domain to my website?
Why should I care which page a link to me is placed on?
Where will incoming links point to?
I don't have a linkpage, only my main page (e.g. blogs) what to put in signup box?
Basic 'Good Webmaster' Rules for membership - let's play fair
How does Link2Me make sure the directory of sites is 'active users only'?
I am having trouble logging in
Is Link2Me really free?
How do I update my site's Google PR?
How do I update the picture of my site in the directory?
Do you support any payment method other than PayPal?
How do I cancel my Link2Me.com account?
Link Retention - What does this measure? (NEW)
Reciprocation Failure - What does this measure? (NEW)
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| Link2Me Overview |
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Link2Me is a link exchange where webmasters can contact other webmasters to request
a link on their site. It is organised in categories so you can easily find site with
similar themes and add them to you familiar shopping cart ready for checkout.
All the sites in the directory are actively looking for exchanges.
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| Why should I exchange links with other sites? |
To increase the amount of people visiting your website via links of partners websites.
People will browse the sites you have linked to, and go to your site from their link page.
Your position in the Search Engines will be higher meaning more traffic.
With more quality links in and out of your website to other sites of similar
content, most search engines will use this information to deduce that your site
is a good source of information on that subject and boost your position. Used
carefully (being selective with who you link to) Link2Me.com can help make your
site get nearer that number 1 spot for your chosen keywords.
Getting your website in the search engines.
Many search engines use a technique called spidering. This means it looks at
sites alread in its directory and checks to see what outward links are on this
site. The 'Spider' will then follow these links and add (otherwise known as 'index')
the sites it finds. So, by getting your site on other sites already in a search
engine, you site is likely to be added to more directories quicker than a manual
submit, and it will also be visited more times to keep your listing up to date.
Why is the actual link page important? And why is Link2Me.com different?
Link2Me.com includes a negotiation system to you can approve the 'actual'
page your link will appear on. This is important as not all pages in a site
have the same ranking / Google PR / Alexa traffic as the main url. For example,
www.mysite.com may have a PR of 8, while www.mysite.com/link/index.html may only
have a PR of 2. Link2Me gives you the ability to specify which page on the other
site your link will appear on. We refer to this page as the 'linkpage'.
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| General SEO Overview |
What is a reciprocal link?
A reciprocal link is where one website A sets up a link going to website B and vice versa.
Both sites should benefit from pass through traffic and a boost in Search Engine popularity ranking.
Link Popularity and Google PR
Link Popularity is a measure of how popular your site is. The more incoming links to
your site, the higher your link popularity. Google have made this the basis of their
search engine by assuming above all that the number incoming links from 'relevant' sites
effectively means that lots of other website owners are voting for it, meaning higher
search engne positioning (serps).
Keywords
A link to your site is made more effective by having your site's keywords (e.g. 'pets'
for a pet website) in the text that is clicked on. This is also known as the 'anchor text'
or 'link text'. Don't go overboard though or people won't want to put a bunch
of meaningless words on their site.
On-site / Off-site optimisation
To make your site search engine friendly, there are two basic areas to concentrate on.
These are on-site and off-site. On-site is things like keywords desnsity (number of
times your keywords appear in your site content), meta tags and title. Off-site optimisation
is things which are 'not on your site' but do influence your search engine rankings,
in fact more than the on-site part. Getting incoming links is the biggest off-site optimisation tool.
There is evidence that links from a site of similar content to yours give more of a benefit to your site.
Thousands of active members
As we mentioned above, building incoming links is one of 'the' most important SEO methods
you have at your disposal. At Link2Me we have thousands of website owners signed up specifically
because they are looking to complete link exchanges. If members are inactive for a period of time,
their sites are automatically hidden from the directory so that only 'active' and 'responsive'
sites are listed. This should guarantee a good response rate to your requests.
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Hiding your site from the directory |
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In 'My websites' there is a button to toggle whether your site is visible in our directory.
When your site is not visible other users cannot add your site to their cart to cannot send
you link requests. You can however still send outgoing requests.
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How does Link2Me make sure the directory of sites is 'active users only'? |
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If users do not login for a period of time their site is automatically hidden from
the directory. They can re-enable it if they do login again in the future in 'my websites'.
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Site approval by Link2Me |
No - Pornographic, nudity, Swear words / Politically incorrect / Offensive / Content lacking /
built purely for adsense or advertising - completely at our discression.
Yes - Quality Content / easy navigation to linkpages
Manual Assesment (48hrs)
All sites are manually assessed to make sure they are acceptable. This usually occures within 48 hours.
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| What is a linkpage? |
An example of a website is: http://www.example.com
An example of a linkpage is : links/index.html (only the part following your registered domain)
Together they make the url to the page where you will place links.
In this example the page would be: http://www.example.com/links/index.html
Your linkpage cannot be on a different domain to your registered website because other users
will expect an incoming link from the website they requested an exchange with.
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Where will incoming links point to? |
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Incoming links will point to the url you registered as your website.
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I don't have a page just for links |
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If you don't have a page specifically for links, such as a blog, you can still use link2me.
Your registered domain is automatically added as a linkpage so you can add links to this.
On the signup pagejust just enter anything for the linkpage as you can always delete it from 'my websites' later.
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Basic 'Good Webmaster' guidelines |
1. All linkpages should be directly accessible from your homepage so that search engines can find the page.
2. Keep the amount of links per page to no more than 50 otherwise search engines may penalise you for being a link farm.
3. Links should be placed on static pages, meaning the one that in agreed in Link2Me.
If your links are stored in a database they should still be output on the same page
e.g. links/page10 not matter how many links you add.
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| Adding / editing / deleting website details |
What is a linkpage?
This is a page where you will place links pointing to other sites. You can place links anywhere on your site, even the homepage.
All linkpages must be navigable from your website so that it is possible for visitors and search engines to browse the links.
How to add linkpages
Login to Link2Me and go to 'My Websites' from the menu on the left. Here you will see the list of sites you have added.
Click on the 'Edit website and Linkpages' button below the website. You can then add and remove linkpages
for this site at the bottom. If your website is www.mysite.com and your links are on www.mysite.com/links/page3.html
then you would enter 'links/page3.html' as your linkpage. All linkpages must be on the domain you have registered.
This is so that other users get a reciprocal link from the site they are exchanging with. You can also
set the default linkpage for this site so that it is automatically selected throughout our site whenever requested.
How to edit your sites
Login to Link2Me and go to 'My Websites' from the menu on the left. Here you will see the list of
sites you have added. Click on the 'Edit website and Linkpages' button below the website. You are then
presented with your site details to edit. Press the 'Save' button to save any changes you make.
How to add a new site
Login to Link2Me and go to 'My Websites' from the menu on the left. Here you will see the list of
sites you have added. At the top you will see a link 'Add new website'
where you can submit new websites for approval to our directory.
How to remove your site
Login to Link2Me and go to 'My Websites' from the menu on the left. Here you will see the list of
sites you have added. Below each webste there is a 'Delete Website' button. This will remove your
site from our directory, and all current link negotiations will be cancelled. There is a confirmation
screen just in case you press the button by accident.
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How to request an exchange |
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Once you have logged in, click the 'Link Search' link from the menu on the left. You can then
browse our directory of sites either by using the categories, or by using the keyword search box.
When you find a site you would like to exchange links with, click on the blue 'Add to Cart' button.
If this is not there it may be that your website is not approved for linking yet. Once it is
approved then the buttons will appear. You can add as many site to your cart as you like.
Once you have finished looking for sites, click the Orange checkout button at the top right,
or the Cart link from the left menu to see the items in your cart.
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If I reject a link request, can they request it again? |
We keep a record of all activity. When you browse our directory, instead of the blue 'add to cart'
button you may see 'Exchanged' or 'Rejected'. In both these cases it is not possible to add the
site to your cart so it is impossible to re-request an exchange once rejected or exchanged.
You may however have exchanged links with the site outside of Link2Me.
Also, rejeecting an exchange with one of your sites does not prevent an exchange with other sites you own.
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| Exchange types: Simple and Approval Process |
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Now you have to decide which type of negotiation you would like to use. You have a choice of 'Simple'
and 'Linkpage Approval'. Simple means that you and the other participant can choose the linkpage where
the link is placed when you add the link. 'Linkpage Approval' means you get to approve the linkpage on
which your link is placed on the other user's website. This is important because any Google PR benefit
you site derives from an inbound link comes from the 'page' on which the link is present, not the PR of
the website's homepage. You are given the PR of the linkpage so that you can make an informed choice
whether to accept your link being placed on the suggested page. If you select 'Approval Process' when
checking out, you need to specify which linkpage you are going to place the other user's link on so that
they can approve/disapprove it. If they approve it they have to send back the linkpage from their site
where they are going to place your link. Again, you can approve or disapprove it. Once you have both
approved each other's linkpages, then you will be presented with an 'Add Link' job in 'Link Status'
which will provide you with the HTML code to add you your site.
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| Google and Alexa information |
Google PR
Whilst browsing our directory you can see the Google PR of sites. Also, during the linkpage
negotiation process, the Google PR of the suggested linkpage is provided so you know that your
link will be placed on a page with that PR irrespective of the PR of the site's homepage.
Alexa Ranking
You are provided with a link to the Alexa website to view traffic details for each website. Alexa
is a traffic guideline. Alexa has a toolbar which thousands of people have installed on their desktops.
It uses data from the behaviour of those users to give websites that
they visit a ranking. The lower the ranking the better.
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| What is 'Link Status'? - Tracking exchange negotiation progress |
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This is the first screen you see when you login to Link2Me, or you can access it via the menu on the left.
Here you will see the status of each negotiation with other website owners. There is a drop down box at
the top to change between viewing jobs where it is waiting for you to do something, and jobs waiting for
the other webmaster to do something. Jobs include approving the page on which your link will be placed
on the other website's linkpage (Linkpage Approval), adding links (Add Link) and so on.
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How long do people get to respond to requests? |
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For every step in a negotiation, be it the initial request, and agreement to link, a linkpage
approval and so on, a timer is set. If at any point a response from the other party is not received,
the negotiation is automatically cancelled. This means you don't have to keep manually removing negotiations
if both parties do not co-operate. The exception to this is once one user has added a link. In this case the
job will stay in the list to reming you to remove the link and cancel the job.
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How do I update my site's Google PR? |
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Go to 'My Websites' where you can see all your sites. For approved sites there is a button
below the site which says 'Update PR'. Click this button to update the PR for the site homepage
and all the site's linkpages.
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Link Verification troubleshooting |
When we check for links which you have placed on your pages, our spider goes to your website and reads
the HTML. We are quite strict regarding the HREF and link text when verifying links are present to make sure that
the search engines are able to read your links and so that everyone gets the benefits of keywords in the link text.
HREF and link text
For a link to be most effective, it is best to have your site keywords in links to your site.
Your site title is also used as the link text for incoming links. To ensure that your keywords do
get added to the other webmasters site we check that the link text matches what was supplied as well
as the website URL otherwise known as the HREF. Remember the 'www.example.com' and 'example.com'
are seen as different sites by most search engines and Google will give them different PRs depending
on how many links are pointing to each one of those examples. For this reason we check the HREF
exacly matches the HREF supplied by the other webmaster. We don not check the description because
it has no SEO bearing.
HTML code incorrect - The </A> is missing on a link above the one you are adding
All links should be coded starting with a <A and ending with a </A>. If the </A> is not added,
the link will still show ok in most forgiving browsers, but we like search engines take a stricter
view and carry on reading until we find the next </A>. All this text will appear to be the link
text for that link. You can see this when a verification fails as all the text for your site will
appear to be on one link where the code is incorrect.
Odd Characters in the supplied link text
We have recently resricted the characters that people can use in their site title (link text) so
that copying and pasting means we can still read it from other websites when we verify links.
However, sites added before this update may have some odd characters. If this is the case, contact
us and we will get it changed so you can add the link again with different link text.
Redirect links - Not supported
This is an HREF link like 'http://www.example.com/?link=10'. When clicked, this pulls the
actual HREF (the one we supplied) from a database. It is usually used so that webmasters can
count their outgoing clicks. This is not supported because it provides no PR benefit to the 'linked to'
site, and the page 'http://www.example.com/?link=10' will only ever have one incoming link and
so have no PR. Only the exact HREF supplied will be verified.
Frames - Not supported
When negotiating, we show you the PR of the linkpage. We do not support frames because the
Google PR you see for that linkpage will not be the actual PR of the frame part source. This
would be misleading. Also, the link might actually be on a different domain (frame source) to
where the frameset is and so the incoming link may not even be coming from the domain you think
you are exchanging with. You can see if the page is using frames by looking for the word 'frameset'
or 'iframe' when viewing the source of the page (View / Source in Internet Explorer)
XHTML - Not Supported
Currently we do not support pages written in XML / XHTML. We are planning
to support this at some point in the future.
Flash Links - Not Supported
Flash links are not supported because not all search engines can read them. This is the same
for javascript links. We recommend setting up a normal HTML page for your links with a link to
this from your flash page. We are planning to support this at some point in the future.
Image Links - Not Supported
These are not supported because they are not as good as text links where you can use keywords.
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Why is my site not visible in the directory? |
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This could either be because it has been set to 'invisible' in 'my websites' by yourself or
because you have not logged in for an extended period of time.
It could also be because your site is waiting to be approved for inclusion.
Or finally it could be because you haven't joined in which case click the Signup link on the left and join for free.
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How do I update the picture of my site in the directory? |
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We us a company called thumbshots to supply the small snapshots of websites. If the image is old or incorrect
you can go to http://www.thumbshots.com/manage/updatethumbshot.aspx
to request an update of the picture.
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Do you support any payment method other than PayPal? |
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At the current time the only payment method supported is PayPal. We are investigating other methods and this FAQ
will be updated with other options when they become available.
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I am having trouble logging in |
Our authentication system uses Javascript and Cookies to enable successful login.
Make sure these are enabled in your browser.
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Is Link2Me really free? |
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Yes Link2Me is free for all incoming requests, and free for up to five outgoing requests
per day. However, if you upgrade your site to advanced which only costs $29.95 per year
you will also get more features such as contact details for partners, link management and
re-verification and more.
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Why can't I see the blue 'Add to Cart' button? |
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This will be for one of two reasons. Either you are not logged in, or your currently selected site is not yet approved.
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| Updating Personal Details |
How to change your email address
From the menu on the left choose 'My Details'. Here you can change your email address and name.
How to change your password
From the menu on the left choose 'My Password'.
Enter your current password and you new password and click the button.
How to change your Challenge and Response and what is it for?
From the menu on the left choose 'My Details'. Here you can change your challenge and
response questions. These are used if you forget your password - the challenge question
will be sent to your email address. Keep the Link2Me page open and switch to your email to
read the question then switch back to Link2Me and enter your response.
If you get it right a new password will be sent to your email address.
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Advanced site upgrade |
Using Link2Me is free for incoming request and up to five outgoing per day.
For the annual fee of $29.95 per website you get unlimited outgoing requests and all the items below.
Inititate Unlimited Requests
Advanced sites can initiate unlimited requests. As a free member you are limited to sending five requests per day per site.
Priority Listing
Advanced sites are displayed before other sites when browsing the directory, or searching with keywords.
This means you are more likely to receive link requests and get more visitors to your site.
Contact Details
As a full member, you will have access to the names and email addresses of people who you have exchanged links with so that you can contact them easily if you need to. Also, on the 'link status' screen, if either side 'approves' the other's linkpage, then the email addresses are shown for that negotiation. Email addresses will not be shown for initial requests, only when negotiation has commenced to ensure everyone's privacy is maintained.
Link Management
So you have negotiated tons of links? Unfortunately there are a lot of unscrupulous people on the internet who will link to you only to remove the link a few weeks later and hope you forget to check up on them. This gives them a 1-way link from your site to theirs and means that your link may be actually harming your search engine positioning.
This upgrade gives you the ability to schedule a full verification of all links you have negotiated using Link2Me. You also have the ability to verify individual links.
In the unfortunate situation that you delete part of your website, this screen also provides you with the original link code for completed exchanges so that you can add your negotiated links back to your website.
Have you reorganised your site and the link pages have changed? To other people who you have exchanged links with they may think you have removed their link. You can use the email address to contact them and tell them where the new link is located. Then in the link management screen they can update the linkpage location and re-verify the link.
Category Permissions
Depending on the type of website you have, you may not want to receive link requests from sites which are unrelated to yours. You may be more interested in 'quality' than 'quantity'. This is very wise thinking because search engines give a lot of weighting to the theme of a site which is linking to yours when calculating how much positioning benefit you receive.
This upgrade gives you the ability to choose who can request a link exchange with your website.
For 'Advanced' stites you can select the categories which you are interested in. From that point on, if a website is located in a category which you have not ticked, they will not see your site in the Link2Me directory and will be unable to add your site to their cart.
Email Management
If you log into Link2Me regularly you may not want to receive the emails for every step of the exchange negotiation.
This upgrade gives you the option to select when to receive emails throughout the exchange process.
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Pagerank and linkpages - a common misconception |
So you have a link from a PR7 site - excellent! Or is it.....
PR stands for PageRank, not Popularity Ranking. PageRank, as the name
suggests works on a page by page basis, not a site basis.
So a site's main page, usually the domain name such as
http://www.example.com may be a PR7, but the page where your link is
placed is very unlikely to be PR 7.
This is a very common misconception. This is very important because one
inbound link from a PR5 page is worth a lot lot more than 100 inbound PR1
page links. So in summary, a link from a PR7 'site' could only mean a PR0 to you.....
For this very reason and to make everything transparent to you, Link2me.com
shows you the actual PR of the page where your link is proposed to be
placed.
PR however, is not the only reason to base whether to accept or reject a
request. The reputation of the site, and through traffic are also very
important factors.
This is why Link2Me shows you the Alexa traffic for a site so you can see
if you would be likely to get through traffic. Alexa work out traffic
rankings based on the users with their toolbar installed. The lower the
rank the better. It should only be used as a guide however as it is
possible to affect the rankings using dubious software.
When you browse our directory, the PR shown is for the top level for the
particular site, be it http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com/mysite.
When you request an 'approval process' link exchange with them, both sides must agree on the
other's proposed linkpage.
When you add your linkpages in 'My Websites' for each of your sites, you
are shown the actual PR of that page.
Don't be suprised if your linkpage PR is 0. This is because the places
people generally place links is on a 'links' page, which is purely there to
display outbound links.
PR is distributed among pages in the internet by looking at the incoming
and outgoing links to a page. A 'links' page will have lots of outgoing
links and very very few incoming links, so the PR will be very low unless
the main page has a high PR and this is linked to the links page. If not
many pages link to this page it can't be very important - this is generally
how Google sees the internet using it's PR algorithm.
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Should I add a link to Link2Me.com on my websites? |
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Adding a link to us is not required. However, the more sites that know about us, the
bigger and better the selection of websites you have to choose from. So, no you don't
have to, but it is in everyone's interest to do so. Adding our link
or not adding our link has no affect on your account whatsoever.
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Do I have to link to people who request a link? |
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No, you can reject incoming requests by selecting reject from the drop down button for that job in link status.
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| I have lots of websites - Can I manage them all with one account? |
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Yes, your Link2Me.com account is enabled for use with multiple websites.
There is no limit to the amount of sites you can manage.
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How do I cancel my Link2Me.com account? |
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Go to 'My Websites' and delete them all. This will leave your account active should you
wish to return in the future. It will also remove your websites
from our directory and you will receive no more link exchange emails.
If you have an 'Advanced' site you will also need to visit the PayPal website to cancel the active subscription.
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Link Retention - What does this measure? |
Link Retention is a measure of how many links are still present on the linkpage they were originally placed on when the link exchange was completed.
In the background we do a daily scan of all links exchanged in the last 3 months, and from this we derive a percentage showing how many
exchanged links are still present.
A LOW percentage suggests unfair practice.
You should not expect sites to have a 100% figure here because the site owner may have removed links because the other user removed theirs.
What you should look for is a LOW percentage which would indicate that the site owner is completing exchanges and then removing links in
order to gain one way links - unfortunately there are people who will do this and this is a useful measure you can use to spot the
users who are attempting to abuse the system. Use your judgement - we would suggest that below 80% might be worth avoiding.
Also take a look at their 'Exchanged' count and compare it to their site, does it look suspicious?
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Reciprocation Failure - What does this measure? |
Reciprocation Failure is the count of outstanding exchanges where the other site has added a link to them, but they have not placed a link back
to the other site within 14 days. Considering vacation and possible technical issues we consider 14 days is a fair amount of time to reciprocate.
Any value above ZERO suggests unfair practice.
The higher the figure is, the more likely this practice is intentional.
Remember, the vast majority of our users play fair, but the more information we can provide to help you avoid the tricksters the better.
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And last of all.... Happy linking! |
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