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What i was wondering though is because i only ask for a backlink, i dont require one, how will the amount of outbound links effect my future page rank?
Is page rank purely based on backlinks? or will the large amount of outbound links have a similar effect?
Should i start requiring a compulsery backlink as the directory grows?
Something i implimented though was a small piece of php that displays the last referrer to the site in the footer of every page.
Im hoping this will encourage people to link to me.
My personal view is that when Google recognizes that your web site is a directory (which is easy for them to do) they will allow your directory to play by slightly different linking rules, since a directory is supposed to have many outbound links. There has been talk regarding this for some time, and I think the general consensus agrees.
I also think that recipricating links are not nearly as valuable as what they are often made out to be, so I wouldn't place too much emphasis on them. Asking for them but not requiring them is probably a good policy, at least for now, anyway.
I've experimented with the http_referer idea a bit over the past year. A lot of people like the instant link, and I've seen it get very popular on one of my sites. I'll warn you though, there is already software built to exploit your generosity which will add links to your pages which don't actually link to those pages. This is mostly done by people operating porn sites and internet casinos, so beware. Be sure to HTML Encode the referral info as well, as it is possible for a hacker to disable a web page if you allow them to place referral information on it.... it happened to me just last week!
Yeah i would like to stick to only asking a backlink for the time being. Id like to keep it free and effective for those who submit if i can.
You make a good point about being carefull with the referrer. Iv already had to add a few sites to the block list for spamming. I also done a few tests by creating a referrer string with the firfox live headers plugin and i was able to do all sorts of unwanted things. I added some code to clean up urls. I strip tags and other non-url type characters.
Hopefully this will be enough to stop people wrecking my site.
