Another Link Exchange site

http://www.weblogempire.com is trying to reinvent itself as a forum for link exchange.

I've reported on link exchange sites before. Conceptually, they are a great idea: you find folks with similar sites, they find you, life is good. In practice, however, the splogs and the clueless dominate such exchanges, making them useless for all but the most patient. The splog content is annoying enough, but so are the clueless hopefuls who think their Elvis fan site is a great link for your political commentary blog.

Link exchange itself is a bit of a sensitive topic right now. On the one hand, it makes sense that if you read this site, you'd also be interested in links to similar sites. Google bases its page ranking algorithms on links, and so do other sites like Technorati: the more links that point to your site, the "better" they think it is. That would make sense in an honest world where there weren't legions of folks scamming the system with incestuous links from other sites they own, link farms and blog networks etc., but there is definitely a dark underside to this now that isn't very pretty at all.

I've suggested to WebLogEmpire that they need an abuse reporting system if they have any hope of making their site work. I've signed up, but if my mail gets filled up with splogs and requests from totally unrelated sites, I'll be unsubscribing very quickly: I don't have the time or patience to sift through tons of junk on the off chance that one legitimate site is buried within.

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