rich42 - 3:18 am on Sep 17, 2004 (gmt 0)

i'd heard similar things - it seems reasonable that Google might favor a website / page linking out to other reputable on-topic sites over one that doesn't.

However:

On this assumption I tried adding outbound links on several of my 'focus pages' to high-ranking google sites using the keywords in the anchor text.

This was about a month ago (the pages have definitely been updated in the index). Some pages have gone up in rank - others have gone down. No major changes one way or the other.

It's not scientific - but if there is an effect - it's either subtle - or at least takes longer to manifest itself.

Just having another instance of the keyword on the page could also be responsible for some upward (or downward) movement.

I haven't removed the links yet - but I may (or at least not add any more). If it's not giving me big gains - I don't want to take the chance of a user (dear god) actually clicking on one of those links - and leaving my site prematurely.