Link Exchange
We link out to sites that make our guides more useful. If you run a travel site, a local guide, a tourism board or a business with genuinely useful pages, you can ask us to link to one of them.
Two things have to be true before you fill in the form. Requests that miss either are closed without a reply.
One: your link to us must already be live
Put a link to a Germ Trips page on your site first. Then give us the exact address of the page it sits on. We fetch that page and check the link is there. We do not take your word for it, and we do not accept promises to add it later.
The link must be a normal, followed, visible link inside your page content. Our checker rejects links that carry nofollow, sponsored or ugc, links hidden with CSS, and links on pages set to noindex. Those pass no value and there is no exchange in them.
Two: you must already know which pages you mean
Name the page of yours you want linked, and name the Germ Trips guide you think it belongs in. Read the guide first. A request that says “anywhere on your site” tells us you have not looked, and we will not go hunting for a home for your link.
What happens when you submit
Checks run within a minute. They cover:
- Your page loads, over HTTPS, without redirecting off your domain
- A link to germtrips.com is really on it, and how many
- The link is followed, not nofollow, sponsored or ugc
- The link is visible rather than hidden with CSS
- It points at the Germ Trips page you said it does
- Your page is indexable, with no noindex or nofollow in its robots rules
- How many outbound links sit on that page, because a page with hundreds is a link farm
- Both of your URLs against Google Safe Browsing for malware and phishing
- Both pages for gambling, adult, pharmacy, essay mill and link selling content
- The page you want linked is on the same site, loads, and carries real content
Every check is shown to us as a pass, a flag or a failure, with the detail behind it.
Passing the checks is not a yes
The checks are automatic. The decision is not. A person reads every request and adds a link only where it genuinely helps someone reading that guide. We turn down sites that pass every technical check and still have nothing to offer our readers.
We will tell you either way.
We re-check
Approved partners are re-checked every day. If your link to us disappears, ours comes down. That is the whole arrangement, and saying so upfront saves everyone the awkward email later.
What we never do
- We do not sell links, and we do not buy them. If money is involved it is advertising, and advertising links carry a sponsored tag. See Advertise with Us for that.
- We do not link to gambling, adult, pharmacy or replica goods sites.
- We do not run link networks, private blog networks, or bulk reciprocal schemes.
- We do not link from a guide where the link would not help the person reading it.