Changes in signature rules

Casinomeister

Forum Cheermeister
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Joined
Jun 30, 1998
Location
Bierland
As the mass PM states, I'm killing the URLs in signatures.

The reason for this is that it's virtually impossible to monitor the URLs. Some members either are not aware of the rules that govern these, or they disregard them.

Signatures will only be allowed for Moderators, and i-Gaming reps. That's it. If you have a hyperlinked sig, you may want to change it to text before I turn the URLs off, They will look fugly if you don't.

Thanks for your understanding.
 
As the mass PM states, I'm killing the URLs in signatures.

The reason for this is that it's virtually impossible to monitor the URLs. Some members either are not aware of the rules that govern these, or they disregard them.

Signatures will only be allowed for Moderators, and i-Gaming reps. That's it. If you have a hyperlinked sig, you may want to change it to text before I turn the URLs off, They will look fugly if you don't.

Thanks for your understanding.
How many bullets do you have?
 
Just so there are no misunderstandings, rule 4.2 is being changed to the following Content Restrictions Please do not post any ad-copy or advertisial language. References to websites are not permitted.
 
To comply with the new regulations, I have removed all my affiliate links to Golden Palace, Cirrus Casino (*chortle*), Grand Prive casinos and...with some reluctance...my signature links to Sluts Alley also.
 
I wont pretend to be not bothered, because I am.
I am also perplexed at this sudden & severe action seemingly out of the blue.

OK, so I had a LOT of links in my signature, but there was no restriction, so why not?
If Bryan had asked me to reduce them or whatever I would have been happy to do so, of course.

Having links in my signature here undoubtedly helped my websites be more successful, and I really do appreciate that. But similarly myself and the other regular affiliate posters here have also contributed significantly to the CasinoMeister forum success in my opinion.
It was a two way thing; I have links to CM on all the main pages of my sites (that's about 40 pages) - should I take them off now this is a one-way deal...?

If there was a perceived problem why not just limit links to 1 or 2 max?
It's Bryan's forum and I will obey his rules, of course.
But I'm not going to pretend to be happy about it. :(

KK
 
I wont pretend to be not bothered, because I am.
I am also perplexed at this sudden & severe action seemingly out of the blue.

OK, so I had a LOT of links in my signature, but there was no restriction, so why not?
If Bryan had asked me to reduce them or whatever I would have been happy to do so, of course.

Having links in my signature here undoubtedly helped my websites be more successful, and I really do appreciate that. But similarly myself and the other regular affiliate posters here have also contributed significantly to the CasinoMeister forum success in my opinion.
It was a two way thing; I have links to CM on all the main pages of my sites (that's about 40 pages) - should I take them off now this is a one-way deal...?

If there was a perceived problem why not just limit links to 1 or 2 max?
It's Bryan's forum and I will obey his rules, of course.
But I'm not going to pretend to be happy about it. :(

KK

The more I have thought about this today, I do emphasize with you KK. It will be the good ethical affiliates that will be hurt the most by this since the next google crawl for me will be tomorrow and my backlink count will drop significantly as well as PR most likely will too. I too have Casinomeister listed on 30 static pages and then since mine is a blog site there are another 128 backlinks to Casinomeister there from the archives and search pages.

The thing is though, our sites will be hurt and impacted a hell of a lot more than Bryan's is here though. The more I have thought about it today...I have to admit too that I am really dis-heartened by this move after all of the time, effort and hard work I have done this year to become an affiliate and build my site up to what it is now and now it will suffer immensely the devastation of losing all those backlinks from here..I'm not just talking about the home page link and a couple of article links I had in my signature either. I'm talking about the 100's of backlinks that were crawled from my forum posts here that led back to my site and google counted... :(

Just wish I had spent more time building more reciprocal backlinks instead of putting so many of my eggs in this one basket so to speak...no offense Bryan. I'm like KK, this is your forum and I greatly thank you and very much appreciate the fact that you allowed me to have my links in my signature for the time that you did. :)

The blackhat guys have definitely beat this ole boy now...:oops: Life's story and highway, turn left and take the shortcut or turn right and try to be ethical and do the right thing and end up halfway back at the starting gate. Two steps forward and three steps back.
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I've been giving this thread some thought this afternoon. First I have no personal motive in stating my opinion as I'm not an active affiliate and I have no sig, so with that out of the way. :)
Do you think that you could reconsider this decision, please? The reasons are that the good webmasters here have put in a lot of hard work and time into their pages and other than the possible sign up they could gain from here, I would say their PR will be hurt greatly by removal of sigs. I understand that you'd like to stop the misuse and that you or Max or the mods don't have the time to monitor it as closely as it needs, but maybe there are a few of us who would volunteer to be watchdogs for you. ;)

Thanks for your consideration.


Another thought.....maybe some day in the future, you might could add an approved webmaster section with criteria much like the approved casino list.
 
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It was a two way thing; I have links to CM on all the main pages of my sites (that's about 40 pages) - should I take them off now this is a one-way deal...?

KK

I'm just thinking out loud here now, but if all of the webmasters that also have reciprocal links or just links for that matter pointing back here to Casinomeister were to all of a sudden remove those, would that not also affect the SERP's back to Casinomeister here?

No more than I know about SEO other than what I have learned this year is the fact that having many, many backlinks to your site are absolutely, undoubtedly the easiest and fastest way of showing up in the first pages of search results because all of those backlinks are what 95% of your google ranking?

Now if all of those or a large percentage of them were to suddenly disappear and the new kid comes along to do a google search for something related to a casino, then Casinomeister may not be ranking up there where they could find it or the info they were looking for directs them then back to some rogue affiliate site and not to Casinomeister. Who does that benefit? I think everyone here would agree that we want new peeps to find Casinomeister so they can get "edumacated :D" on what Rogue casinos are.

Someone correct me here please if this is not the way websites rank normally.
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I had removed all of mine yesterday..I will find a other alternatives to promote my site.

I have to say I am surprised that webmasters openly admit to seeing this site as a "marketing vehicle" for their own endeavours. I too run some affiliate websites but would not dream of going to another forum and plastering my links all over every post I make, then complain when the forum owner decides to stop the practice.

If you are scared of linking to CM because your website visitors may never come back to your site then perhaps that is saying something about the value of your site to visitors. If SEO is all you care about, then you should be aware that linking out from a site to an established "authority domain" in your site's field can actually be positive for your rankings. Take a look at the bottom of the pokerlistings homepage for example, do you think they link to google or dmoz out of the goodness of their hearts?

RobWin, yes lots of aggrieved affiliates pulling their links to CM could have a small negative effect on this site's search rankings, but the removal of 10000+ (? just a guess) outgoing links from this site will probably have a far greater positive effect to this site than that, due to the net gain in "link juice" to internal pages on this domain.
 
Let me see if i have this right, i can no longer go to KK's or Robs or Bingot's site from here if i wish to see what new casino they may have a promo on?

As a player i always liked to check out the sites and can understand why they would be upset, looks as if they have put alot of hard work and sweat into their respective sites.

The sites i have visited do give good advice and make mention of this forum, which is a good thing, for new players, i sure wouldnt want them to get hooked up with a rogue promoting affy:eek:...........just a regular ole players take on it...........laurie
 
Yes you can Laurie. Just click on the username and then the homepage of that member. I clicked Rob's username and then homepage and was diverted to his site. As long as their usernames are in GREEN and any member wishes to enter their sites, he can still do so easily.
 
I have to say I am surprised that webmasters openly admit to seeing this site as a "marketing vehicle" for their own endeavours. I too run some affiliate websites but would not dream of going to another forum and plastering my links all over every post I make, then complain when the forum owner decides to stop the practice.

If you are scared of linking to CM because your website visitors may never come back to your site then perhaps that is saying something about the value of your site to visitors. If SEO is all you care about, then you should be aware that linking out from a site to an established "authority domain" in your site's field can actually be positive for your rankings. Take a look at the bottom of the pokerlistings homepage for example, do you think they link to google or dmoz out of the goodness of their hearts?

RobWin, yes lots of aggrieved affiliates pulling their links to CM could have a small negative effect on this site's search rankings, but the removal of 10000+ (? just a guess) outgoing links from this site will probably have a far greater positive effect to this site than that, due to the net gain in "link juice" to internal pages on this domain.

First of all I do not under no circumstances use this site as a vehicle to promote anything. So you well know I removed my links as I felt they should not be there in the first place. I have no reason to spam my links to get paid. I have a full time job and this is only to make a little cash on the side. In no way shape or form will I spam anything I detest it. Maybe I should of worded it differently. But please make no mistake that was not my intention. I would rather put a graphic signature there instead. This is why I refrain from posting in the introduction thread.
 
I have to say I am surprised that webmasters openly admit to seeing this site as a "marketing vehicle" for their own endeavours. I too run some affiliate websites but would not dream of going to another forum and plastering my links all over every post I make, then complain when the forum owner decides to stop the practice.

If you are scared of linking to CM because your website visitors may never come back to your site then perhaps that is saying something about the value of your site to visitors. If SEO is all you care about, then you should be aware that linking out from a site to an established "authority domain" in your site's field can actually be positive for your rankings. Take a look at the bottom of the pokerlistings homepage for example, do you think they link to google or dmoz out of the goodness of their hearts?

RobWin, yes lots of aggrieved affiliates pulling their links to CM could have a small negative effect on this site's search rankings, but the removal of 10000+ (? just a guess) outgoing links from this site will probably have a far greater positive effect to this site than that, due to the net gain in "link juice" to internal pages on this domain.

But I thought that google recently changed that, and the way that link juice was distributed between internal pages? :confused:
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I didn't mean this quote. I removed my links and demoted myself to Meister Member. I will never use my links on Casinomeister for monetary gain. I apologize to anyone that may have been offended on the above.

vegetagirl2008, I did not see anything at all wrong in what you said about removing your links, just a simple statement that you made to acknowledge that. :)
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I didn't mean this quote. I removed my links and demoted myself to Meister Member. I will never use my links on Casinomeister for monetary gain. I apologize to anyone that may have been offended on the above.

Yep, same as Rob, I read your post initially exactly how you intended it - and very much respected your position. Then when you clarified, I re-read and totally could see how someone could get the wrong impression. Trippy perception bias or something.

I'm no SEO expert by any means, but I think zanzibar has it right (although Rob then says he's heard Google changed the algorithm). But under the 'stable' (?) algorithm of recent times, every SEO guy (that seemed to really know their stuff and had impressive SERPs) I've spoken to over the last year or so would agree with zanibar's summary. I'd actually be very interested to see what the results would be - my gut feeling is that CM.com would benefit greatly from the removal of the thousands (?) of outgoing links.

Unlike zanzibar, I do actually kinda sympathise with KasinoKing and Robwin and guys who have 6000 posts and really have been valuable members for a long time - I guess if some kind of compromise could be found for them (which I think chuchu59 refers to), they definitely 'deserve' it (assuming, as I do, that they are definitely the "good" type of affiliates who aren't all about the $ but willing to speak out against or cut ties with a casino if the situation calls for it).

I just hope we could get to a point where everyone feels safe saying "Hey Xxxxx, please comment on this thread - you're a Yyyyy affiliate and opinionated, surely you have something to say about Yyyyy's actions here?" - without it being seen as a troll or an attack on that person - something I'm not yet comfortable with doing just yet, but excited that maybe, just *maybe*, we're heading in that direction?

But I would hope that if Xxxxx consistently avoided commenting in negative threads about casinos they promote, they could be called out publicly for it - perhaps not in a "You're an unethical affiliate!" type of tone, but more a "Come on mate, you really have to step in here and give your opinions - I know it's a tough spot for you, but it's important you at least state a position, please don't sit on the fence here!" - or something? I dunno...just kinda thinking out loud / spit-balling....
 
Yep, same as Rob, I read your post initially exactly how you intended it - and very much respected your position. Then when you clarified, I re-read and totally could see how someone could get the wrong impression. Trippy perception bias or something.

You had me at wrong impression..the rest just went right over my head. :)
 

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