Poker listings directory

[addaminsane]

I know alot of new sites look to poker listings as a guaranteed incoming link. Many of them i think in a dumb manner use one of there banners with like 4 text links to pokerlistings on there homepage. For the most part Pokerlistings doesn't care about where the link is, as long as they're getting an incoming link. Anyways after examining the source code of a pokerlistings webpage I'm not sure if bots pick up these links. There source code for the directory listings links is not standard html. Even if these links get indexed, I wouldn't be surprised if they are even of a lesser value than an image banner link. Correct me if i'm wrong. Plus i've had a link in there for a while and it doesn't even show up on the yahoo linkdomain: page which almost shows everything. You'd think a link from an "authority site" like pokerlistings would show up pretty quickly. Just throwing out an observation that could be wrong. Can anyone correct this by letting me know that google has indexed their link from a pokerlistings page? Or possibly finding out the value of their link?

Even if you say "well, i dont care, its a good traffic link" Unless you have a very high quality site that pokerlistings is linking to, i don't think the traffic coming from that site is very high quality. People who've found the seemingly "abundance" of information and resources at pokerlistings are not very likely in my opinion to go to many other sites and put much value on the quality of the content on that particular site, unless of course it happens to be higher quality than pokerlistings. And of course, if you examine the pokerlistings directory, they strategically don't place high quality sites at the top of their list unless it is a very profitable link exchange for them.

[Notspot]

In my experience if you get a hit from pokerlistings you'll get an email from an AM 5 minutes later.

[edmc]

The strength of a link is more related to the strength of the page. You will be on a newer page so you will be linking to a PR0 from the authority site. Getting a deep link might not get you any direct hits but as the page ages you should see a little increase in the serps.

To balance it off, if you are getting 200 hits a day on your page and losing some of your traffic to pokerlistings, do you think it is worth it? I would say it is more of a speculative trade to help in your serps rankings, not for direct traffic.

I wouldnt worry about the link not being indexed right away because it should but whether or not it is good enough to lose some of your current traffic. Pokerlistings will contact you if they want a link other than that you are taking a speculative risk. Linking out to authority sites can also help. You have a great looking site so if I was you I wouldnt get my knickers in a twist over it

[edmc]

also with your sites theme you might consider a stronger server. I timed out a couple of times but you are likely to get erratic surges in traffic

[kaus]

Originally Posted by addaminsane

I know alot of new sites look to poker listings as a guaranteed incoming link. Many of them i think in a dumb manner use one of there banners with like 4 text links to pokerlistings on there homepage..

I refuse to do that even in ealier months. Now I did do it with flop turn river but quickly pulled that to. I would rather it go to someone who has a site that is just as good....maybe they don;t have as much info all the time as PL, but when you are lacking a team of what 100+ people to build it for you it;s no wonder.

I have a link going to PL that is a one way link. I have not asked them for one back because I dont really care to. May seem dumb but...I have inlcuded them because they have the info but I refused to give them any significant link.

I just dont understand that and yes getting indexed be a reason but you can get indexed from fidning other people as well who wont force you to display 4 links if you know what I mean.

Hope this makes sense very tired today

[PPP]

The links from pokerlistings are 100% useless, except for traffic. They redirect links through a directory denied by robots.txt.

So if you want to make a tradeoff of sending them a valuable link to get one with zero search value but some traffic in return, go for it. But if you get no traffic in return then you are just flushing value down the toilet.

[edmc]

Originally Posted by PPP

The links from pokerlistings are 100% useless, except for traffic. They redirect links through a directory denied by robots.txt.

So if you want to make a tradeoff of sending them a valuable link to get one with zero search value but some traffic in return, go for it. But if you get no traffic in return then you are just flushing value down the toilet.

How do you know this? Ive seen directories with similar redirect links

[addaminsane]

you guys, my point is that the source code of the links is not static html, rendering the links either almost or completely worthless. Which is why pokerlistings will except links from brand new sites that may not have there link indexed for 6 months or crappy sites that will fade out. Basically, it is important for people to understand this possible misdead or mislead of Pokerlistings taking advantage of seo ignorance among affiliates. This thread should be stickied for all affiliates to see, so that they can know to be cautious when exchanging links.

I personally think the directory of basically one way link backs is a big reason why pokerlistings is so big. I don't see them as particularly user friendly and there content is mediochre. Not quite at the usability or bookmarking power of a pokernews.com. I don't see a ton of people going to pokerlistings and not being slightly overwhelmed with the layout. At least I was at first, its a grow on you site that most people wont let grow on them. Look at there forum, it blows. Why not band together at the biggest poker affiliate site and rip there dumbass, link exchange with benefits directory and website apart.

read up on javascript and redirects and nofollows and see how they can be used to dillute or completely mask link power. Obviously a nofollow completely renders a link worthless however they are easy to spot. You gotta watch out for the tricky stuff. Such as javascript, ajax (new wave of the internet) and redirects, and many more that I don't even know about.

[scottmc]

1) Links from PokerListings to other sites are through a redirect ( http://www.pokerlistings.com/content/xxxxx - xxxxx determines where re-direct points) and also blocked through the robots.txt file (2nd line). These links are worth zero in terms of search engines.

http://www.pokerlistings.com/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /content/
Disallow: /download/
Disallow: /poker-glossary*
Disallow: *print=true
Disallow: *review=summary
...
...

2) Direct links are only ever used (well 99.9% of time) to their own sites (eg launchpoker.com).

3) How valuble is the traffic from PokerListings? IMO probably zero. Can you see someone visiting your site from PokerListings and then signing up at a poker room? Or more likely they will signup through PokerListings in the first place? Again IMO it will be the latter almost always.

[edmc]

Thanks scott. I thought it was a crap deal without the nofollow. They offered to buy links from me the other week. I turned the offer down because I dont rate the site. No other reason, it was tempting though