MikeNoLastName - 8:39 pm on May 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

"Do you think that if people are hardcoding within their site (to their site) this would mean the same?"

From what I'm thinking... I'd say No. Within site linking is obviously necessary, and not against what it appears they are trying to block.

" If we removed extra external links, do you think this would help during the next crawl? "

If my theory is correct, it sure wouldn't hurt.
But of course this is only a theory which will need much more testing and observation, so only do what you feel you can live with. In our case some pages which have a lot of external links are so low in the SERPs that it couldn't really hurt, so WE will be playing with it.

The more I think about it, the more it follows what I have been predicting for 5 years and which people have laughed at in the past. That G hates competition, including sites which try to be like it. These include directories, other search engines, middle-men type advertisers. So the more your site looks or acts like G (whether intentionally or by accident), the lower they're going to rank you. Don't believe me? Go Google the term 'search engine' right now and ponder the order of the results. The more non-competitive, neutral, free content you offer (like published library book text ;), the more they'll like you.