stevenjm - 4:00 am on Oct 1, 2007 (gmt 0)

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

The backlink has indeed been devalued, however selectively.

.gov backlinks are still strong as is yahoo directory and other large authority type sites.

backlinks that are showing up all seem to have one thing in common - they also have the url in text. This fact would suggest that the text url is now very strong as its outweighing the negative effect of the actual backlink on the same page.

Its no secret that google has been going after paid linking and I think that this is part of their strategy to tackle it, where it will lead is anybody's guess.

I think you are correct about the search volume effected industries.

Taking it further, although text url is the obvious exploit of the moment, its also possible the algo is doing a correlation on the numbers between what IT considers to be a legitamte link from its list of sources and other sites which at a certain point is assuming paid linking or heavy seo and imposing backlink penalty.

I don't think its about "juice" to good links. I think its about penalty to bad and the ratio between good to bad links.

[edited by: tedster at 7:38 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2007]