Hacker News Reader

Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

Why? Why should anyone remove outbound links simply because the destination _thinks_ they are harmful? And even worse, if the destination is in fear of some other _third_ party which _might_ think they are harmful?

In the bad old days of the Internet, web sites would complain if you linked to them, because they though they had some sort of a right to determine who linked to them. After court cases, etc. the issue was resolved. And now this.

If Google really thinks that a link is illegitimate, then it should just ignore it in its algorithm.

Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.

View on HN

I explained why in the first post. To be friendly and a generally good person. Legality was not a reason given so I'm not sure why you feel that's an argument. In this case, the guy posting the link does have a bad reputation, which is no doubt the reason for the search ranking hit. His deliberate posting and refusal to remove it makes him a bit of an ass.

And "Why" one should not behave as an ass is self evident in my mind. But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence.

Many SEO consultants have suggested that even if you get the links removed, you should still disavow them in order to help speed up Google's evaluation of the links profile.

In those instances, even if you think you are being a good guy, there's a good chance you are wasting the one resource you can never recover (time) in an attempt to help someone who is likely going to attempt harming you AND waste your time.

> But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence.

That was the point of my last sentence: even though I asked that replies be in agreement, you still chose to reply. It's the same as someone asking "please don't link to me", but everyone is still free to link. That's the way discourse works, and that's how linking should work too.

hahaha

Ok, I take your very well made point.

> Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.

I agreed up until this, but I think it's meant as irony?

Heh... that was the idea. :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com