HarryM - 5:17 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

Some of us have done the homework. I have read through reams of stuff on this subject, and all I have been able to deduce is there are two camps, the yeas and the nays. There is little hard evidence that stands up to scrutiny, steveb's post being a case in point.

For it to be a valid test, we would have to compare the amount of PR passed from these pages now with the PR passed from these pages say about 6 months ago. So unless someone had the foresight to take a snapshot we are none the wiser.

And even if steveb's results were found to be valid, that would not prove any sort of penalty. One would have to filter out all the changes in the algorithm before coming to that judgment.

It is much more likely that the majority of link pages have always passed low or invisible PR. They are frequently low in the PR hierarchy, have many links with little text, and I suspect a considerable number exceed the suggested limit of 100 links per page. Changes in the algorithm may have heightened our perception of this.

We should also bear in mind that concern has been expressed that backlinks in general (not just from link pages) are not showing as we would have expected a few months ago.