Link Distribution

This document explains how the Contextual Partnership Network distributes links between various members blogs. It should hopefully give you a better understanding as to where your own links are placed, and more importantly, how quickly you’ll receive any incoming links owed to you.

Of course, if you don’t want to get a headache - as it’s all pretty heavy - you might just want to rest assured that as a member we are certainly looking after you. It’s entirely up to you ;-0

Link Placement General - Whom Links To Whom

We work out which partner links to which partner based on keyword supply vs. demand in content, everything else mentioned on this page below, and some other features of the algorithm that we just can’t get into here. This is not a reciprocal link exchange, nor some three way linking arrangement between members blogs.

However, we do impose some strategic linking arrangements between partners to maximize the performance of the network as a whole. Not much more can be said about this because it’s part of our proprietary algorithm.

Generally however, if you want to use a specific keyword term on another blog, and that blog can provide it (and assuming the algorithm gives it the green light) you’ll get that link.

Technically it’s possible that you could get and give an incoming link from/to any other member in the network  but only if “computer says yes”. At the moment there are no additional qualifiers other than being an active member within the network - having passed quality control guidelines which the collective as a whole has found acceptable.

We do not determine “value” of a member in any other way - such as the volume of traffic an individual blog receives, pages indexed in search engines, or so forth.

We might look at doing this in the future to more closely align members into similar performing groups (to increase the probability of such link exchanges amongst them), but in the meantime we wanted to keep things simple.

The Network Is Not Real Time - But It’s Very Close To It

Please understand that this is always going to be a lag between when other partners links are placed on your own blog, and when your links will then be placed on others.

The network itself is not processed in real time as it is simply not practical.

Instead there are tiny communications between the network servers and every individual blog in the network several times daily. During these interactions, the network is told what your blog can supply in relation to keyword terms (and also what you want in relation to keyword terms and links).

A search is then conducted on our servers (a lot of computations) to look for partners links that can be placed on your individual blog post - based on your supply (keyword terms within the content of your article). Partners that require these links are then assigned to your blog based on your outbound link settings (granting you credits for your own incoming links) and the servers then look to see where your own links can be assigned on other members blogs.

The server then passes this information back to your blog on the next “system cycle” whereby your own blog (and all other network blogs) are updated.

These “system cycles” happen several times daily.

Let’s now assume that everything was nice and simple.

That every member was targeting different keyword terms, those terms were always available within the network, and there was always more than required. In such a case, technically one cycle could update the entire network and every member would always have “links given vs. links owed” nice and flush.

Of course this is very unlikely to be the case because several members could be competing for the same keyword terms, and at certain points in time the demand for those terms might also outstrip supply. As a result, we have to apply a priority scale when “cycling” to ensure distribution becomes fair for all members (and members receive what’s owning to them in the most timely manner possible).

Link Placement Priority…

First and foremost link distribution and placement is maintained via a proprietary algorithm that we have developed, the nature of which will never be fully disclosed for privacy reasons.

Rest assured however that we have developed this in the fairest possible way to ensure there is equal distribution rights for each partner on the network, depending on how much value they are providing to other members, and the network as a whole.

This also ONLY applies when two or more members are competing for the exact same keyword terms on the network AND only if there is not enough supply at that given time to meet everyone’s needs. This doesn’t happen too often given the share scale of the network, but it can happen and is the reason behind 99% of backlogs in links owed to members.

More details about this below…

Generally, the more links a member is able to grant to other members in the network, the better the change they have to receive their own incoming links in as short a time frame as possible.

However, and although it certainly helps to have a high outbound link setting, there is not a direct correlation between that setting and your individual priority.

This is because it depends entirely on the keyword terms that can be placed on any given post within the network, at any given point in time.

A blog with an outbound link setting of 3 might be giving more outbound links to other members - than a blog with a setting of 6 for example - simply because the first blog happens to contain more keyword terms in their blog posts that other members want.

As a result, this blog will have more credits owing to them and receive an increased priority in receiving their incoming links because they are providing more value to partners at that point in time.

To be more specific this is achieved using a combination of techniques;

The first is a ratio we assign to each partner in the network based on links given to other members verses links owed from members (at any point in time).

To keep the explanation as simple as possible (because technically we do it differently) - imagine we turn that figure into a percentage for each member. For example a member might have a current placement distribution at 90% fulfilled. That means 90% of what is owed to them in incoming links has currently been given.

Any member that falls below the percentage placement threshold is moved into a priority placement queue for specific keyword terms (over competing members that might be after the same terms but have a lesser priority because they already have most of what is owed to them).

This ensures that any members that are well below this threshold always receive priority in their placement because they have more credits owed to them than a standard member.

This does not disadvantage members competing for the same terms lower on the priority scale.

They already have a large allocation of their incoming links placed, and it simply means that their additional links will be placed after the priority member is lifted above the placement threshold (and are then removed from the priority queue). Furthermore, all members are going to be in the high priority queue at some point in time so it balances things out naturally.

Secondly we also use a time based ratio to ensure that no one member is backlogged with links owed for a long period of time. That is we work out when individual links were granted to other partners from a specific members blog, and if no links can be given back to said member within X amount of days of giving those respective links, that member is then moved into a super priority queue.

These two features working in combination ensure that no member is ever severely lacking in both the volume of incoming links they are due to receive, and the timeframe in which they receive them.