Fgump910 - 8:36 pm on Dec 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

I have been building links for over a year. One of the things I hear constantly is that it is important to have your links on quality, "related" sites.

It seemed simple to me at first...something I didn't question. Then I began to think of how ludicrous that might be.

How many genres of sites are there? Billions? Or just the main ones you'd see in an online directory? If a humorous blog links to a news article, is Google like "hmmm...that blog is hilarious, but this news story is about as interesting as watching a history lecture by Ben Stein....LINK DISCOUNTED!"

Another reason I think it might be bologna is that even the best automated sentiment analysis software is nowhere close to being able to determine (with any great degree of certainty) if somebody is saying something positive or negative about something. Language is just too confusing, and I would assume it is the same deal with websites and Google. All Google has to go off of is the saturation of certain keywords on a site...something that is not necessarily indicative of a site's content.

So my question is....does GOOGLE actually know or care if a link is placed on a relevant website? OR, is the main reason to place a link on a relevant website meant to pass the human eye test?