What is an Independent Back
Linking Network?
Link popularity is something
all websites need to meet the ranking criteria for most major
search engines. While quantity is important, so is the quality
and the reputation of the link.
Running a linking campaign is a tedious but
important process. There are many back linking pitfalls and
with Google's Jagger Update we will certainly see some serious
shifts in the SERP's.
Independent Back Linking
Networks
An Independent Back Linking Network, or IBLN,
is a relatively new term and it does have a bad connotation.
Conceptually, it seems, linking sites together is what the
World Wide Web is all about. As the information on the Internet
amasses, rules needed to put in place to control relevancy.
Then people started to break the rules. We call them spammers,
or black-hatters; people who exploit the criteria to work
in their favour. When this becomes out of control the search
engines must react in order to produce quality results.
An Independent Back Linking Network occurs
when sites sit within the same IP range, specifically sharing
the same C-class, then all back link together excessively.
The following table shows how and IP address is constructed:
IP addresses are divided into 5 classes:
|
Class
|
Start
address
|
Finish
address
|
Comments
|
|
A
|
0.0.0.0
|
126.255.255.255
|
Supports 16 million hosts
on each of 127 networks. Allocated to large networks
and multinationals.
|
|
B
|
128.0.0.0
|
191.255.255.255
|
Supports 65,000 hosts
on each of 16,000 networks. Allocated to ISPs or educational
institutes.
|
|
C
|
192.0.0.0
|
223.255.255.255
|
Supports 254 hosts on
each of 2 million networks. Allocated to small and medium
companies.
|
|
D
|
224.0.0.0
|
239.255.255.255
|
Reserved for multicasting.
|
|
E
|
240.0.0.0
|
255.255.255.255
|
Reserved for broadcasts.
|
If two websites have the same C-class, it
means that the first three parts of the IP address are the
same. For example, 211.68.11.76 and 211.68.11.75 have the
same C-class. On the other hand, 211.68.22.76 and 211.68.32.75
have different a C-class because the third set of numbers
is different.
Most website owners have no control over
the IP address or C-class they are allocated for their websites.
Search engines may identify and penalise clusters of websites
linking to each other from the same IP Block or C-class. This
may be because this kind of back linking looks unnatural and
also looks like it is done for the sake of increasing link
popularity and search engine rank rather than relevancy. This
theory, however, has not been proven yet and no major search
engine has spoken about this clearly.
How is an Independent Back
Linking Network created?
AAA Web Designs develops and hosts websites
that happen to be in the same industry - it is their specialty.
There are more than 500 sites created that use IP addresses
within the same range and all of them share the same C-Class.
All of the sites are also back linked together because they
are complimentary to each other. Then these sites also have
a link back to the website (again, within a complimentary
industry) that is AAA Web Designs biggest client.
The image below shows an example of an Independent
Back Linking Network - the numbers represent the C-class.
Set-ups such as these are getting more closely scrutinized.
AAA Web Design inadvertently created an Independent
Back Linking Network and guess what? AAA's biggest client
is now banned on Yahoo! The real problem is, while AAA was
trying to "do the right thing" many optimisers are
not by creating this type of independent back linking network.
Taken a step further, what if the site you have hosted is
sharing the C-class of an IP block that has a banned site?
|
