Link Farms/Directories/Top 100 Link Sites

What are each of these, and are they good or bad for increasing PR

[geezer]

Hi all

Yet more questions I'm afraid...sorry!
I have heard people talk about each of the above...
Link Farms, Link Directories & the 'Top 100 Link Sites' whatever those are.

Are these all the just different words for the same thing, or are they actually different.
Are any of them of any positive use in gaining link popularity with the likes of Google etc.,and finally if there ARE any good ones, can anyone please either recommend them, or perhaps let me know of where I can go to find a list of decent ones.
I have read some documents which say that Link Farms in particular do more harm than good, but then I've also read documents which claim we've put men on the moon. Who knows. Does anyone out there have any thoughts please?

[ukgimp]

Yet more questions I'm afraid...sorry!

Without questions life would be dull and this place rather quiet. Keep Asking.

With the rise of google came link popularity. It become obvious that a site could get good listing based largely (not exclusively) on the number of inbound links. With this discovery people started to exchange links at a great rate. This process became automated for some and what started to appear as a result were huge pages of links, all linking to each other. This made the results less relevant and google did something about. They “punished” sites for taking part in blatant link farms/ Free For All (FFA)

I directory is an all together different beast. Think ODP and yahoo, they are the godfathers of directories. All site in these two have been reviewed by a real person and as such are considered authoritative. With that authority and respect from the point of the search engines goes a demand. People clammer for an ODP or yahoo listing. They are by no means the only ones that are big players. Joaeant.com and goguides.org along with thousands of local and regional directories. Some require cash to list you others don’t. Well worth seeking them out.

Top 100 sites is probably just links page on a site or may be ones that have been clicked the most and the directory/site has ordered them

read documents which claim we've put men on the moon.

I have read those too. Do you think there is any truth in it? :)

[geezer]

ok ukgimp..thanks for your help. Much appreciated.

[paynt]

Hi geezer and Welcome. ukgimp has provided great information. Again, it depends on what your overall strategy is. Top 100 sites are very popular with craft and hobby sites and can draw tons of traffic their way, the same as web rings. In fact some industries are so dependent on them that they literally survive on the traffic they receive from these avenues, regardless and in spite of PR.

Forgive me Google but I think a separate strategy can be developed where you create a whole site, block Google from spidering and then use the FFA’s and Link Farms, web rings and Top 100 sites for linking. Not to build Pagerank or rise up in Google [which of course you won’t get] but just for the traffic from these links.