Wil search engines find my site using the following link exchange?

Is it worthwhile

[bassplayer]

A site owner emailed me that they put a link to my site on their site.

They are requesting a link back to their site then they would move my site to "the top of the list", but I am wondering if anyone(searchengines specifically) would be able to find my site through their link.(Their link page and home page have zero Google ranking. My home page has a 4/10 ranking but my link page is still zero)
I checked their code(I have replaced with my site with the word"mysite" and I left another url there because you may need to know it)

Here is the code from his site:
<tr>
<td valign=top width=140 align=center><img src="http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://www.mysite.ca/" width=120 height=80></td>
<td valign=top width=350><div style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: #333333">
<a class="rightnav" href="javascript:void window.open('http://www.mysite.ca/', 'MyWin', 'toolbar=yes, directories=yes, location=yes, status=yes, menubar=yes, resizable=yes, scrollbars=yes, width=640, height=380')">My site name</a> - My site description<br><br>
</div>
</td>
</tr>

[jcoronella]

javascript links to my knowledge are still not passing PR. This recip looks like it's all in his favor unless you think you will get users visiting your site from his.

[bassplayer]

I guess the PR isn't as important as whether his site would become a backlink. I click on the link from his site and it opens my site in a little window and shows my PR but his site is not listed in the backwards links. If it never will I don't see any sense of linking to him since I don't think anyone will find my site from his.(My site is the first on Yahoo and Google search for most keywords and just became first in Altavista and somehow just disappered from msn.ca - I reoptomized today to try to fix this)

Maybe I can request a regular html link instead of the java one? (Or put the same java link on my site?) ;)
Or maybe he's waiting til I link to him to change it to html. I don't see the advantage of the java link except that my window is smaller than his.

[kwngian]

<quote>Their link page and home page have zero Google ranking</quote>

Zero? As in PR0? If it is so, I wouldn't link back to them unless I also want to get a PR0.

[trillianjedi]

They are requesting a link back to their site then they would move my site to "the top of the list"

At this point that e-mail should just go into the trash can.

TJ

[sem4u]

I think it would be best to ignore this one. :)

[PCInk]

If they are a related site where you think it might be worthwhile being listed, simply link back using the exact same method. If any PR is passed one way, it will be passed back.

If they are not worth being listed on, just delete the email.

[jbinbpt]

I agree with PCInk. Be very careful linking outside your area of interest. Keep your links within your neighborhood.
Do you have any idea you else they are linking to?

[anallawalla]

I guess the PR isn't as important as whether his site would become a backlink.

If spiders can't read JS links, then the site can't be a backlink for you. If you don't see a clean link from a page, don't bother to think any more about the request.

[bassplayer]

Thanks for responding everybody.
I just noticed the description he has for my site is the same as on DMOZ. He called his site a directory and it's about sports. It has different catagories listed by sport then by region. My site is for a sports club.
I guess if I put the same Java link to him from my link page it can't hurt since my link page is now a zero Google ranking.
I tried adding some sentences on my link page to give it some "page copy".
Would Google downgrade the pagerank of a page if it's called "links.html"?