Referral Links and Google Quality Scores

Google's algorithm continuously monitors web links pointing to Goldtresor and assigns quality scores to each one. The aggregate of these link-quality scores plays a vital role in helping Goldtresor rank first in Google search results, so that every prospective customer interested in investment gold can find us.

Why does this matter? Several well-intentioned customers have placed web links pointing to us on their own websites or on so-called web directory sites. However, this does not necessarily help our ranking in Google search results, because web directories — otherwise known as "link farms" — have very low Google relevance scores and therefore drag down our average score. For this reason, we ask that referral links be placed only with Goldtresor's permission, as we assess the link credibility score of the referring site in advance. Our webmaster monitors links pointing to Goldtresor using specialist tools, which means unsolicited links can be identified quickly.

You may wonder whether a link in your browser bookmarks is also a problem, or whether it can be mentioned in an email. The answer is simple: it must not be placed on a website, because Google's search crawler looks at websites — it will not search through a user's browser, correspondence, or personal writings.

Referral of Goldtresor is possible by initiating it from within the Goldtresor system, which has the added advantage of allowing the customer to earn a commission paid in gold.

#### Link credibility scores

The more pages with high credibility scores (DA — Domain Authority and PA — Page Authority) that link to a website, the more credible that website is considered by Google. Google's scoring is based on the principle of social endorsement: if someone is recommended by a socially recognised or credible person within a given community, that recommendation carries a high score, whereas if someone is only recommended by people unknown to that community, the endorsement can actually harm the recommended party's standing. If a website exists solely to recommend other websites, its credibility score is in all likelihood zero in Google's eyes — it may even receive a so-called "spam score". Links from such sites have a negative impact on the recommended website, because the search engine assumes the site is trying to achieve a good ranking through tricks rather than genuine content.

In the past, the use of link farms was a well-established method in search engine optimisation. A link farm is a website that typically contains only links, has no meaningful content of its own, and receives no links from pages with high credibility scores (DA and PA). Today, however, receiving links from link farms counts against a website's ranking.