Goodwill links in obscure places?

Beneficial or harmful?

[pmkpmk]

The uncle of our CEO works as a doctor for a huge, renowned hospital. He talked his webguy (a student) into placing a link to our site on every webpage of his deparment (about 6 pages). Obviously he wanted to "help" us, by giving links from his PR4 website.

However, the links are pretty much hidden in the Copyright-notice of each page. Tweo webmasters are listed by name, seperated by an ampersand. This very ampersand is the link to our site. The pages themselves are very, very remotely on topic.

The good thing is that since the recent update Google DOES count them as backlinks (shown when I search for link:www.mysite.com - that's actually how I found them). However I am afraid that it might hurt in the end since the anchor text is - well - only the ampersand. I won't get any referrals by this link either.

So, should I tell him that I appreciate the effort but he'd better pull it off? There's no way I can get a link from these pages with more qualified anchor text.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Matt Probert]

Cant see these links being a problem to you. At worse they will do no good. Just forget about them and move on.

Matt

[longcall911]

As long as you don't link back, I can't imagine any harm done. Remember, GG understands that you have no control over how others link to you.

A link back to that site though, starts to look like a scheme.

/*tom*/