Selling a website

[clickxnet]

If a trader on Linkspun sells a website, for which he has made trades, would they be within their right to request those trades be dropped so that they no longer have to honor them? I have mixed feelings. I know that part of the value of the site sold was it's back links and SERP's, but at the same time, it leaves the trader with a bunch of outbound links for which he no longer gains any value.

Should they keep the trades in place, or are they within their rights (legal / ethics) to request they be stopped?

[Hincapie]

Legally and ethically - yes, he is in full rights to drop them, unless something else has been agreed with the seller in my opinion.

Most website sales will be done in all sorts of other places - and in those places most buyers wont even have heard of Linkspun, much less feel obliged to honour trades done here.

Of course, the nicest thing would be to agree to keep them in one way or another - or have the seller deal with it first, but in the real world thats probably rare.

[HowlingWulf]

So after the buyer takes control of the site, the seller removes all his incoming links and traffic to it?
Sounds like a 'screw u' to the buyer. Agree to something before the sale.

[mBishop]

If they are ABC or ABCD trades where the seller of the site benefits from inbound links to other sites because of outbound links on the site sold, then there is no reason for the buyer to keep those links because they have outbound links without any benefiting inbound links.


But in the end, don't worry about trades etc, if a site sells and the new owner drops links, linkspun will detect the dropped links and will show them, then you can drop the trades. This is what link checkers are for.

[jaxinvt]

I think this thread was started because of me. When I sold the site (not just the domain), I mentioned existing trades to the buyer and they said they were not making any promises. They are a member of linkspun and we agreed to see what happens. This is the result. It was the buyer that stripped the links and although the site is still live, it is in his possession. I no longer have access.

I'm not outing the buyer because he is perfectly within his rights to do anything he wants to a site he now owns. He did not make the agreements, I did.

I now sent out notices to all remaining members who have trades with this site so they can take care of it.

Thank you clickxnet for posting this question for debate.

[jaxinvt]

I do believe that the buyer, being a linkspun member, should be fully aware of the value of existing linkspun trades and should try to honor them if presented with a list of existing linkspun trades. I did not do this either so the blame is still mine.

[jdoughs]

In my opinion the BUYER should not worry about links, when I buy sites I strip them and/or replace the links with my own trades.

The SELLER should either maintain links to that site or not, based on what deal they've made with the seller. If no such deal has been made, I don't believe the seller needs to maintain those links either.

If I buy a site, I have no deal or arrangement that I need to live up to except what I've made with the seller, and 99.99% of the time, it's just a monetary deal (I give you money, you give me the site).

I'm sure there is occurrences that arrangements to keep links live are made, but I wouldn't be interested in them myself.