Tamar Paid Linking

I came across some of Tamar's work recently and was surprised at how obvious their paid linking was! Tamar have a reputation for being prolific link buyers and not for their technical knowledge.

There were a few things that caught my eye.

1) The fact that they are linking to 5 of their clients at a time from the one site.
2) That some of their links are going to the wrong URLs.
3) That they use the same link blocks more than once.

The image on the right is a screen capture taken from one of the websites Tamar uses for their paid linking. As you can see they are linking to the following clients:

1) B&Q - www.diy.com
2) Direct Line - www.directline.com
3) Tesco Personal Finance - www.tescofinance.com
4) Hillarys - www.hillarys.co.uk
5) Empire Stores - www.empirestores.co.uk

If you look closely at the Tesco Personal Finance link the URL is:
http://www.tescofinance.com/personal/finance/finance/mortgages/discount.jsp

If you follow this link you get the following message:

Sorry, this page has now moved to Discount mortgages.

So the page has moved location but Tamar are still buying links for the old page! And just as alarming is that the old page hasn't been redirected to the new page.

Looking at some of the other links we see that they are all from low quality blogs, a lot of them on the Blogger platform, a lot of them written by stay at home mums, and the same text has been used for over 300 links for each company.

"From Conservatories to Wind Turbines" - Google Search

"Every little helps with Tesco Discount Mortgages" - Google Search

"Get a Home Insurance quote from Direct Line in the UK" - Google Search

For such a high profile search agency, and such high profile clients I expect a higher standard of work.