Link trains: there’s plenty going around at the moment, the Technorati Favorites exchange, the DoFollow movement, and feed train to name but three.
Are you in favour? Do you like them? Or would you rather not touch them with a blogging bargepole?
I have used them in the past, but there seems so many now, and the more I read, the more it seems that not only do they have little long term benefit, in some cases they may actually harm your blog’s ratings and stats.
What’s your opinion on them?
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21 users commented in " The Sunday Poll – Link Trains "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI voted that i really don’t like them, but only because like you i don’t see any long term benefits out of them.
I don’t envisage getting regular readers out of it.
I’m kind of with Claire on this one – I’ve done one link train, gave away about 25 links, and only saw maybe six in return on technorati.
PS: You and Claire were among the six!
I voted “What are they?” Would you care to explain what they are?
I have mixed feelings about them. On the one hand then it takes a lot of work to stay on top of all those link trains and get the most out of them so in some sense then I respect that. On the other hand then I’d prefer sites to grow organically but I think that can just happen in some Utopia.
This is interesting so far, thanks guys.
I purposely didn’t explain them Lenny, so bloggers such as yourself could vote accordingly
Link trains are where a blogger posts a list of links based on a loose theme: Everyone use DoFollow as a recent example. You as a reader then take this list, copy it into your blog and add some more links of your choice. The next blogger along copies it and adds more and so on…
This way the early blogs gain a large amount of links in a short space of time, but they are obviously not relevant, rarely translate into actual traffic and often get hijacked by Splogs and scammers.
D’you mean “Wordless Wednesday” etc? Or the Techorati faves thing?
I can’t see any value in them. I think content is the key.
i agree, i think that may be why we didnt increase in pr, but who knows
The Technorati Faves thing Baxter. No, WW etc. are well worth doing for networking other blogs and are well worth it.
Matthew, the thought had crossed my mind….
I voted that I didn’t know what they were.
Now that I know what they are I can’t see that they will be useful long term. Perhaps they will drive a couple of visitors to your site.
Geez, I hate to be the only one…I guess if you went into the TFFX just for the added faves, and didn’t plan on visiting any of the blogs, then it would be kind of just self-serving. I did participate, and did get extra fave exchanges. But, I also found some really interesting blogs to visit too. My PR happened to raise recently too, from a 3 to a 4. I now have some new readers, and so for me, it has been a positive thing.
Ah, thanks for the clarification, Chris – it’s the faves thing. There’s a lot of these going on at the moment, isn’t there? I saw a new one involving RSS feeds a couple of days ago – the “feed train”. Not for me.
OK. I voted that I really don’t like them, but have to admit that I’ve participated in a couple. I don’t plan on participating in anymore of them even though I did see gains in my technorati ranks and RSS subscriptions due to these. I also have found many new and interesting blogs through these trains.
Although some of them are very positive, I am getting more & more suspicious. Is this because my blog is a lot more popular than when I started? Who knows…
I used to use them, and have even very recently, but the last one I did left a bad taste in my mouth. It was The Feed Link Train meme. I just don’t think it was a good idea & I’m going to stop doing them I think.
Man…I still believe you should check the “Subscribe to Comments” by default.
all the comments I just made…I forgot to check it & now I’m not subscribed to any of them. I would still rather uncheck it.
Hey Matthew, I quite agree – it’s why I’ve pretty much called a halt-when you have to spend an hour checking every link to weed out the porn and the scammers, they’re less fun.
Sorry about the subscription thing, it is just personal preference – I hate getting subscribed automatically: Perhaps this plugin could do with a ‘global’ setting where you can subscribe yourself automatically?
Ah-ha!! That’s a great idea…as a matter of fact RT, GarryConn, BlogPaul & myself have been discussing this point here today (checked or unchecked).
I still think your community feel/return discussion suffers if it’s unchecked…but like you said…it’s personal preference.
I’m still debating on whether to turn it off or not. I’m trying to figure out what my readers want.
Anyway…I think I’m done w/memes for awhile. Good post.
Matthew, if you use coComment, you don’t ever need to subscribe to comments on blogs. It can keep *all* of your discussions, from all over the web (blogs, forums, Flickr, whatever), in one neat place:
http://www.cocomment.com/
Thanks Baxter…but I must ask the age old question…how much does it cost?
coComment is free.
[...] bit of a thumbs down from last weeks poll, with over 50% of voters either actively disliking the link trains or not using [...]
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