HTML Help: Reciprocal Link Submission

What if you submitted a site and they had just submitted it a few hours or a few days before? Perhaps their site could be penalized for ingoring the guidelines by resubmitting their site too soon.

What if they already had good search engine positioning and their ranking got lowered after you submitted it? In either of those scenarios your site wouldn't be helped as much as it would have if you had just left well enough alone.

However, I don't think whether it would help or hurt is the issue . . . I just don't think it's an ethical thing to do. If it's someone else's web site I don't see it as your option to submit it to search engines unless you have the web site owner's permission.

Look at it this way...if Joe Nosehole stole your computer, Joe would have crossed an ethical line that most would agree was not his right to do. After all, the computer is your property, Joe had no right to take it—correct?

Logically then, you'd have to agree that the other person's web site is their property, not yours, and therefore it's not your right to do whatever you want with it, such as submitting it to search engines.

Just as Joe stealing your computer would be theft, submitting someone else's web site would be a misappropriation of someone else's intellectual property unless you obtain their permission to submit it first.

I would always advise that ethics are to be considered first, and that decisions should be made that fit within your personal ethical code. It's easier living that way than trying to shape your ethics to fit the conditions.

You can build your life on the solid bedrock of unwavering personal ethics or on the shifting sand of situational ethics and convenient justifications.

I do recommend you build your house wisely though—you're the one that has to live in it. Since you stated it sounded sneaky when you wrote to me, I think you already knew the answer.