ASTAARA MEDIA

FFA Pages - 'Free For All' Link Lists

1,000 Search Engines?

Maybe you've seen advertisements that claim to submit your website to 1,000 search engines or maybe even 10,000, or more! Have you ever wondered where all those search engines are? Most people could count the number of search engines on one hand. Yes, there are more than five, but 1,000?

Once you know what FFA pages are, you will understand how these companies can make such claims. FFA stands for 'free for all'. Free For All pages are web pages that contain links to hundreds or even thousands of other sites. You can submit a site to these pages by filling out a form and providing your email address. Your site will automatically be listed without your having to return the favor. It's easy!

Companies that charge you a fee for listing your site on thousands of search engines are actually listing your site on thousands of FFA pages. They have developed software that searches the Internet to find FFA pages. Once this software finds a Free For All page it automatically fills out the 'Submit Your URL' form.

Most FFA pages limit the number of links allowed. Established links are automatically removed to make room for new links. For this reason, the turnover is extremely high, which is why companies encourage you to resubmit your site every couple of weeks — with their help, of course.

History

Web sites originally created FFA pages as a way of attracting visitors to their sites. In theory, they were supposed to be a useful and friendly service. However, when software was developed to locate and automatically distribute links to FFA pages, suddenly no one needed to go to the FFA sites. Now links are blasted out to thousands of pages that almost no humans actually see, and because of the volume, these links are active for a very short period of time, sometimes mere seconds.

In the past , you might have boosted your PageRank by submitting your website to FFA pages. Because your link was 'one-way' or nonreciprocal, the search engines saw it as an honest 'vote' from one site to another site. The more votes your site received, the higher the PageRank. However, since the quality and relevance of the site also affects your PageRank, FFA pages are most likely to offer a zero PageRank boost.

Are FFA Pages Worthwhile?

Hardly anyone visits FFA pages while surfing normally — mostly because they are hidden deep within a site or are simply a link farm that no one cares about. The only people that might visit these pages are other webmasters submitting their own links. They might click on your link out of curiosity. Otherwise, it's the software bots submitting links or the email-harvester bots looking for addresses.

FFA submission software is capable of submitting links to 500 or more Free For All pages in each posting campaign. Statistically, you will get a very small amount of low-quality traffic. If you're lucky, you might get a half dozen extra visitors a week after submitting to thousands of sites. Still, it IS free...

Where's the catch? What do the FFA page owners get? Why would they want to collect links? The answer is simple. They don't. They want the email addresses. They first send you a confirmation of your link acceptance (which isn't even on the site anymore). Then, they will route volumes of advertising spam to your for months. They don't want your link on their site. They just want it there long enough to harvest the email address.

Words of Advice:

There are many sites and programs that will allow you to submit your link to thousands of FFA pages (search engines) for free. This is fine, if you want to try it. You will be asked to provide an email address. In return, you will get tons of spam. This means that if you submit to 1000 FFA pages, expect 1000 emails confirming your submission and and then about 30 times that amount of advertising during the next few months.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER volunteer your personal or official website email address. Make sure to use a free throw-away email account, like Yahoo!, Hotmail or zWallet. We especially like zWallet because it has an [empty folder] at the top of the in-basket. One click to clear the entire in-box and then one click to empty the trash = 1000 pieces of spam gone!

Running Your Own FFA Pages

It's not difficult to set up your own FFA pages. Sites like FFAnet.COM will let you set one up for free — just for giving them your email address. They will send you a confirmation email and some advertising. Then people will place links on your FFA page and you will get their email addresses. You will get to send those people confirmation emails and advertising, then...

Don't expect anyone to read them. The truth is that your messages will be filtered, ignored or deleted. They will just be more spam. We suggest you focus your efforts on something more rewarding like: