Objective Reviews
Obviously, other link exchange services are Evolinktion's competition, but here you will find the most thorough, objective, and articulate reviews of the most popular link exchange network alternatives available.
Evolinktion encourages all webmasters and/or business owners to endeavor to participate in exchanging links with other quality and relevant websites in some form; be it a small campaign that you launch to recruit a small number of very specific reciprocal partners to aid the patrons of your website as they search for other sites similar to yours or a large scale link exchange program designed to boost your site rankings and popularity, exchanging links is vital to the success of all websites.
Our reviews will consider the following criteria:
Overview – An overview of each link exchange service.
Notes – This portion of the review will highlight particular aspects of the link exchange service, as well as bring to your attention the various drawbacks of each link exchange service.
Link Farm Page/FFA Test – This portion of the review will test whether or not a link exchange service allows link farms (pages full of nothing but links – they receive little to no updates nor contain any inherent value or content) or FFA (another, more insidious form of link farms – it is detrimental to submit your link to a FFA site/ring/page…in most cases). To test this, Evolinktion creates a link farm and/or FFA website and submits it to the link exchange service. A link exchange either allows this website/link to be accepted to their directory, thereby failing this test, or chooses to exclude this link from its database, thereby passing.
Customer Service – The level of customer service received when contacting each link exchange service. Customer care is of the utmost importance to Evolinktion and the most successful business owners/operators.
Sample Link Page – Here one can view an unaltered sample of each link exchange service's link directory/page. Looks are important!
Rating – The final rating. Judged on a scale of 1-10: 1 being abhorrent, 10 being flawless.
GotLinks?
Overview
GotLinks offers a fabulous alternative to Evolinktion. GotLinks is free to join (at the time of publication), has over 2,000 link partners, most of which are of high quality, and boasts an extensive customization process including a customizable link page template and exclusionary filters. GotLinks offers a demo (which they seem to be quite proud of), a robust FAQ and help system to persuade visitors to join, as well as to guide and help new and established link partners, and is, overall, a great reciprocal link exchange service.
We would highly recommend joining GotLinks in addition to Evolinktion. The more links back to your site the better, and using GotLinks in tandem with Evolinktion will exponentially expand your incoming link base.
Notes
One thing to keep in mind if you are interested in GotLinks is that you must have PHP/ASP support to join. GotLinks does not support hosting of your link directory. Evolinktion offers no commentary on this practice. You do, however, need to be aware of this fact. (The ability to support PHP or ASP is an option that your web host or server should offer – PHP and/or ASP are necessary for advanced scripting and if you are serious about becoming a success online, you will at some point need to add PHP/ASP support to your hosting package or server.)
Not hosting partners' directories is advantageous to GotLinks and its members in many ways. First, it obviously lowers overhead and disk space usage. Second, it forces all GotLinks partners to host their own link directory directly from their website, which is always a good thing. Finally, it allows GotLinks to easily and quickly spider partnered websites to ensure reciprocity.
Interestingly enough, GotLinks boasts of manual link reviews. Upon registering, one is prompted to create their link directory, and is instantly added to the database. There is no review process, as each partner is added automatically. This is the only striking contradiction encountered with GotLinks, though.
Link Farms/FFA Test
Failed – Despite claims of manual review, a link farm page was instantly accepted to the directory.
Customer Service
N/A
Sample Link Page
Rating
9/10 – Highly recommended; not supporting hosting of partnered link directories (though this fact is in many ways debatable), some inconsistencies in copy on the website (including the aforementioned contradictory claim of manual review), and the inclusion of a FFA website to the directory kept GotLinks from receiving a perfect score. These are relatively minor flaws; GotLinks is highly recommended if you have PHP/ASP support.
Links-Automation
Overview
Links-Automation is free to join, but there seems to have been little to no activity with Links-Automation in the recent past.
Notes
Very few link partners – at the time of publication, there were less than 30 partners; unattractive, albeit standard, links page, and a relatively poor website also hurts Links-Automation's chance to offer a high-quality link exchange service to their customer base (such as it is).
We hope the good folks at Links-Automation figure out whether or not they're in the right line of work before too long. Links-Automation could, with effort, become a viable link exchange service, but it seems that they are currently apathetic at best.
Link Farms/FFA Test
Failed – Despite claims of manual review, a link farm page was instantly accepted to the directory – not surprisingly.
Sample link page
Rating
1/10 - Pending Further Updates.
Link Dash
Coming soon.
Links-Exchange
Coming soon.
Link Foundry
Overview
Link Foundry is a decent link exchange service for the coin, and has a fair amount of customization. Link Foundry's, well, founders, seem to care a great deal about establishing themselves as a true presence in the link exchange industry, as well as their customers.
Notes
When fully live, Link Foundry will charge all new members the same fees as Powerlinks ($19.95 set-up fee, 9.95/mo.), but at the time of publishing this page, joining only costs $2.95/mo. as Link Foundry is still in its infancy, much like Evolinktion (though we're free), and is trying to grow their link base.
We would encourage all prospective link partners to at the very least take a look at Link Foundry's website. For 2.95/mo. (assuming one is reading this while this fee is still applicable) you receive over 300 partners – not a bad deal at all! Plus, your $2.95/mo. fee will applicable for the life of your domain, so you will receive even more links for your three bucks as soon as more partners join.
Link Farms/FFA Test
Failed – Despite claims of manual review, a link farm page was instantly accepted to the directory – seems to be a theme amongst the “other guys”.
Customer Service
N/A, but assumed to be top-notch (judgment based upon forum posts by the admins and mods).
Sample link page
Rating
8/10 – Once Link Foundry gains the link partner base of some of the “other guys”, they will certainly become one of the leaders in the link exchange industry - highly recommended. This site will obviously have to be re-reviewed to assess value once the price is increased to its standard amount of $9.95.
Powerlinks
Overview
Powerlinks has been around for over a year and offers a diverse and varying degree of quality link partners. Powerlinks offers a bonus system for new partners who were referred from your link directory or website (Evolinktion will offer this once we're fully live), offers a reduced fee for multiple websites, and a decent degree of customization.
Notes
Upon publication, Powerlinks charged $19.95 to join, $9.95 per month, and $4.95/mo. for each additional website. This is not a bad deal considering one will receive over 1,000 partners (this number varies greatly – see below). The $20 “setup” fee seems to be a bit steep, though. Powerlinks is completely automated, so it is not certain as to why it is necessary to charge such a relatively high setup fee.
Powerlinks partners vary wildly in quality. There are some quality PR 5-6 members, but many partners are low-quality, low PR pages (not necessarily indicative of the “quality” of a website) that receive little to no traffic and/or updates (browse the sample link page to see for yourself). What this means to you is that you will have many undesirable link partners. Sure, one can opt to utilize Powerlinks' exclusionary filters, but it doesn't make much sense to pay 10 bucks a month for 18 links (or however many partners you will deem to be of the highest quality). If you do join Powerlinks, we would advise you to be weary of your link partners if your website caters to all demographics, as there exist some very questionable partners in the Powerlinks database.
Powerlinks' database also includes many pages that are simply non-existent (one clicks on a link and gets an error page or is redirected) and more than one link farm page, as well as duplicate – and even triplicate – pages (different links, same website).
We will not make a suggestion regarding the use of Powerlinks link exchange service. Powerlinks is a quality link exchange, but there are many flaws, most notably the link exchange partner base.
Link Farms/FFA Test
Failed – Despite claims of manual review, a link farm page was instantly accepted to the directory - that's total automation for you.
Customer Service
Acceptable - Response received within 24 hours.
Sample link page
Rating
6/10 – Quality link exchange service. Large number of partners, but many of which are questionable. Some dead links, redundant links (different links to the same page), and nonexistent pages hurt Powerlinks's final rating. Overall, Powerlinks offers an acceptable link exchange service, but is currently the most expensive service reviewed.
If you would like to comment on these reviews, please feel free to join the Evolinktion Forums . These forums will grow to become the most reliable source of online business owner and webmaster resources on the web, and we would encourage you to join the forums whether or not you care to join Evolinktion – Evolinktion is about helping all small and online business owners and webmasters, not just Evolinktion link exchange partners!
If you would like to suggest a link exchange service to be reviewed, please feel free to do so either by joining the Evolinktion Forums , or contacting Evolinktion directly .
Banner Exchange Reviews Coming Soon!
