the net

Link Farms

Link Farms or "Where's the Content?"

There are lots of specialist internet sites. Too many some would say! Some are informative and helpful and others are nothing more than "link farms". (The SEO definition of a link farm is a group of websites which are heavily interlinked with the sole purpose of boosting pagerank)

What is a Link Farm?

A "link farm" is an internet user term for a website which has a primary (sole) purpose of linking to other websites.

These link-farm-sites have zillions of links to other sites but usually offer very little by way of original content, if at all. Often any material that is on the site is copied from another website without permission in order to give the link-farm-site some validity or to help it gain a place in the search engines.

Many links may at first seem like a reasonably good idea, and for the websites which actually offer originality in content, links to other websites are a great way of offering the viewer access to further information.

Where a link farm website differs from a good site is in the absence of good quality, original information. Anyone, and I really mean anyone, can publish a site to the internet, pay a few search engine visits and start splashing the links returned by the search engine on the pages.

If you visit a website which isn't a directory and contains nothing but links to other sites, close the browser window and try a different site. If you are a very web-savvy individual, there is nothing to stop you scanning through the links if you can be bothered.

For everyone else, the chances are if you dig hard enough, you could find a useful site using one of the links. More likely however, are hours and hours wasted clicking on one link after another yet finding very little useful information in return for your efforts.

More often than not, you get directed to more link farms! They aren't worth the trouble.