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Mining 31,500,000 Free Links For The Take

by Ruud Hein | Oct. 26, 2009


Majestic SEO kindly reached out to us, correcting Yahoo's link data and showing off their own impressive backlink data power at the same time: the true number of backlinks to GeoCities is over 850 million.

Today, Yahoo closed GeoCities. A little bit of history, a little of culture disappeared <sniff>

And this is yet another event where SEO's separate themselves from normal people show their true, professional nature.

Where others see the web decreased by 7.5million web pages and 8 million images, we see…

31,500,000 850,000,000 Free Links

GeoCities started in 1995. That's when Microsoft released Windows '95 including this thing called Internet Explorer. Netscape was just 1 year old. In Internet
years,
GeoCities is
56 yearsThe world was different, simpler almost. Except for publishing web sites that is.

In other words, GeoCities is ancient. In Internet years, GeoCities is 56 years.

In that time the millions of web sites and web pages hosted on GeoCities have acquired a shitload staggering amount of links. Over 31 million 850 million in fact.

Those links lead led to pages about just about everything and anything. People talked about their families and pets on GeoCities but also build resources about the Mic'maq, CGI freebies, or coffee. That and about a million other topics.

Mining 31,500,000 850 MILLION Free Links

Use Yahoo's linkdomain operator to find links pointing to Geocities. Add the keyword or topic you're targeting. This combination finds pages that and link to Geocities and have your keyword on their page.

linkdomain:geocities.com SEO

politely contact the site ownerWhen you find a prospect, politely contact the site owner to point out that Yahoo has closed GeoCities but that you may have an alternative resource available for them to link to.

Melanie Nathan has some excellent tips on how to approach site owners in Link Request Strategies for Blogs, Edu's & .Gov's: Respect My Authoritah!

It's a Wrap

  • Yahoo takes Geocities offline
  • …but thousands of links are still pointing to it
  • …search the ones relevant to you
  • …and suggest to repair their broken link by replacing it with yours

See also

 

And you? Do you plan to make use of GeoCities' disappearance? If not, why not?

Images by: vshioshvili and franganillo

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23 insightful comments

Yes indeedy you can smell the link juice in the air! Some of it with the foul odour of fried spam and burnt copyright and trademeark laws… also some very good reference and resources but the SE's didn't stop indexing large portions off it for nothing around 97 before Yahoo! bought it if memory serves correct.

terry Van Horne  #

That's the beauty; whatever those pages held … the good links to them are clean :)

Ruud Hein  #

Great post… Just hearing the name 'Geocities' makes me all nostalgic! The internet had a certain magic in the mid-late nineties… I remember actively looking for sites to link to in those days! Anyone for Web Rings? lol!

William Tucker  #

Web Rings were great — of course you shouldn't just join one; you had to have one :)

–[ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ]—

^^ That's what I remember a lot from GeoCities :)

Ruud Hein  #

And just thinking about how many of those are possibly edu & gov links, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy :)

I suspect that most people will be too lazy to put in the work of doing the research and contacting each site though. That's good. Their loss = our gain.

Melanie Nathan  #

I bet that will be the case, Melanie. Some of the best SEO is at the same time the simplest, easiest … yet most time consuming. From good content to going through a pile of free links :)

Ruud Hein  #

I like this , it could actually come in handy.

thank you

Sarah D  #

interesting, so we can ask politely the webmaster whose page linked to old geocities page and replace the links with ours.. sounds yummiee..

no contract cellphones  #

A lot more than that – 850,697,046 external backlinks from 916,529 referring domains!

https://www.majesticseo.com/search.php?q=geocities.com

Majestic SEO  #

That's .. staggering. And an impressive display of the backlink data you guys have collected.

Thanks for the correction: I've folded it back into the post.

Ruud Hein  #

A very useful approach to acquiring some new links.

Thanks for sharing,

Karl

Karl Foxley  #

This is very interesting indeed. I suspect it will be a numbers game. Chances are, many of these sites still pointing to Geocites aren't updated much and getting a hold of these webmasters might prove challenging. You will also have to find unsuspecting webmasters who don't see links as commodities. Still worth it if sending 50 emails yields 1 good link.

cbhost  #

There's really good stuff in between. Found some City Councils linking to resources, for example.

I think Melanie is spot on in that for the most part, these backlinks will simply go to waste.

Ruud Hein  #

[...] Geocities ist tod – holt euch die Links! – die Domain wär auch nett… [...]

» Oldschool Spammin´ & Jammin´ | seoFM – der erste deutsche PodCast für SEOs und Online-Marketer  #

There is even a better way of getting those links. Go to the Google cache or archive.org then download the actual content, place it on your webspace as a mirror and then ask for the link.

Tad Chef  #

Very creative, Tad. I guess how you do it also depends on whom and what it is for. But yes, truth remains you can work these links a lot of way and the way you describe allows you to get some links to newer pages.Smart!

Ruud Hein  #

What a brilliant idea. I was going to contact local clubs etc. and see if they wanted a new website, but this seems like more fun and may even pay more in the long run.
Jon recently posted: Fall of Pound Lifts Essex Exports

Jon  #

Now this is funny, just did a new search and my website came up twice in the top 10. At least I can guarantee the links get changed!
Jon recently posted: Fall of Pound Lifts Essex Exports

Jon  #

[...] Andre kiggede i stedet straks på mulighederne, som opstår, når så mange sider forsvinder. I dette tilfælde link harvesting, som det kaldes, når man finder broken links og tilbyder et alternativ. Tags: geocities, websider [...]

Geocities er lukket – og hvad så?  #

[...] I am not the originator of this idea so I'll just link to this excellent link building article where everything is [...]

Making The Best Of Geocities Demise – Smart Linkbuilding Tips | Financial Freedom Ideas  #

I am surprised they don't keep the content in a wiki style system and plaster their click thru ads all over the pages, could generate some significant income.

going green home  #

[...] case you missed it, there was a great post about mining GeoCities backlinks recently. It basically pointed out that, with the closure of all GeoCities sites, there were now [...]

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[...] they adjusted the blog for both tweets and comments engagement has increased partially due to the rocking post and today is still getting comments. I even joined in the [...]

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