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Can any one confirm or deny the fact that PageRank is no longer passed between reciprocal links?
I just heard that only one-way links count now, is this true?
Can somebody please explain why I would be hearing this type of talk if it is not true, and if it is true, what should we do about it?
TIA
Christyl
Because there are a lot of dips in the world.
Don't hold your breath.
Like if you run a fansite about a particular car, and you want to be able to direct users to other sites of interest.
Well, those sites at the end of your links are going to do the same, and then you got a reciprocal. And it's for everyone's benefit!
IMHO whacking reciprocals would mean completely ignoring the way the web works...
There are always people who claim they know something but in fact they often don't know anything.
I thing the reciprocal link issue is a very important and very difficult thing.
On the one hand there are millions of sites out there using link trading programs, but the links pages of those programs are very crowded, that links from those pages are not worth the time to sign up to such a program.
On the other hand I think if manage to trade links yourself by writing an email to the webmaster of the sites you want to trade with this is a sign of the quality of his site and if he agrees to trade links it is also a sign of quality for your own site. I never would trade a recipocal link with a site that seems to spam or uses tricky methods. And I think most webmasters wouldn't.
So I think reciprocal links are a sign of quality if they are not generated by a automated links page or directory which automatically accepts every site as a link partner.
And I think Google should index and use manually set up links pages and ignore automated links pages. In some sense I think it is doing it already by giving PR0 to link directories.
After all, most of the web exists as recip links in some form or another.
I would also say that not all link directories are being PR0'd (I think that DMOZ would be a good example) but I know of hundreds that are doing just fine
On that topic, I've wondered whether links from PR0 pages (which are dynamically generated) on otherwise high PR sites (such as the classifieds in alternative weeklies) are valuable links.
Can somebody please explain why I would be hearing this type of talk if it is not true, and if it is true, what should we do about it?
Even at webmasterworld you'll find some legends, e.g. "Google follows links in the noframe tag".
By the way, the PR benefit of reciprocal links is neglectible. Of course, the page with lower PR is benefiting from the reciprocal link. However, if one considers both sites (not only the two pages), the total PR (sum over all pages of both sites) is nearly unchanged. The only change is coming from the devaluation of other external links due to the additional link. For the case that both sites have no other external links (as well as for other cases where the transferred PR to third party pages is unchanged) the total PR is unchanged - just the distribution is changed (i.e. the PR of one site is increased while the other is decreased).
Of course, there is a benefit from reciprocal links due to the additional anchor text. Also, the ranking might be improved due to the additional link (depending on Google's ranking algorithm).
Lots of great things about reciprocal links, starting with the first item above. Trashy reciprocal link programs that only exist for anchor text benefits are a different kettle of fish. That is just crap seo with no user benefit. People use those just to improve their rankings in the current anchor text addicted algorithm.
I've never understood that argument, denisl. Often, if pageA is related to pageB then pageB is ralated to pageA. In that case, the relationship is one of relevance rather than reciprocation for its own sake.
I believe many use the rumour mill to put off and stall the competition. If G ever discounts recips, for whatever reason, you can be sure that it will be BIG news here at WW.
"Can somebody please explain why I would be hearing this type of talk if it is not true"
You are listening to the wrong people!
Even if it were true, would you stop using reciprocal links? Of course not! The fact is that they generate traffic to your site if they are on topic or otherwise relevant to your site. As has been pointed out above, that is how the web works and no search engine in their right mind will penalize you for doing it. Full stop.
Anyone who is remotely related to me would never link to me. They'd much rather sell my product and earn a commission.
For some of us the trashy reciprocal programs are a necessary evil.
We try both angles on different sites (recips on one and pure quality with top notch incoming links on the other) and I have to say the trashy method is catching up fast and is much easier to do than produce interesting content and find people to link to it.
Much as I would like to produce lots of nice juicy content I am afraid where I live it's hard to find good authors, and I am far too busy to do it myself.
Just to put the other viewpoint there is a strong case to be made that it is not. If I build a non-commercial site then I link to whoever I please, reciprication is not a factor. If I build a commercial site do I link to competitors? nope.
I think it comes down to if you believe that reciprocal links are how the web works or not, I don't believe they are. I feel that reciprocal links, in sufficiant numbers, are a signiture of SEO work. At best ill advised and worst dangerous.
I agree, but the signature of SEO work is also the signature of someone working on his site. And for commercial searches, these will most likely be the best results. No?
On the other hand, the freshness is also a factor, but Google is working on that too, so I guess in the end keeping reciprocal links in the algorithm makes some sense, so long as it is not over weighted in importance.
[edited by: SlyOldDog at 7:19 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2003]
well, PART of how it works.
The web works by web sites linking to each other yes, but naturalistic linking (which google soley wants to monitor rather than recips) is more likely to be one way.
The rise of reciprocal linking was boosted by its use as a PR boosting method where links were key to PR, but commercial and other types of sites could not acheive it naturally, but only by negotiating "Scratch my back, scratch yours" agreements with others.
So LINKS is "the way the web works" yes. But the web could work quite well without reciprocal links (and arguably even better).
The problem for SE's is how to identify a negotiated "reciprocal link" that would not exist if not for SEO reasons, otherwise im sure google would have discounted PR and link pop value for these a long time ago.
but they use mouseovers to convince their link partners they're being linked to with html, when they're actually being piped through a php script that doesn't pass any pr.
the site has a pr5, nothing special, which to me indicates it has not become a 'hub' in google's eyes, and it doesn't rank particularly well (my smaller, less linked but properly reciprocated sites outrank it)
I'm sure most SEOs would just robots.txt protect their link page
I've wondered whether such use of a robots.txt file creates suspicion, or perhaps even slightly penalizes a site.
The file can be used, it seems, in many creatively deceiptful ways, therefore my concern.
I am currently using robots.txt so that google doesn't see pages that appear to have duplicate content (but subtley don't).
I link to virtually everyone in my industry. And a very large percentage of the companies in the industry link to me. I have never traded links. All the links on both my site, and the sites of the companies, are voluntary links to important resources.
The internet is full of neighborhoods, not just the infamous bad neighborhoods. In most cases, the majority of your natural outgoing links will be to others in your neighborhood, as will most of your natural incoming links be from your neighborhood. With this arrangement, you will end up with a very high rate of reciprocal linking.
Think of it from a "personal home page" standpoint. You would link to the home pages of your immediate family, and they would link to you. You would link to your friends sites and they would also link back to you. You would link to pages related to your interests, and if you put up pages about your interests, you would likely get links back from some of those pages.
SEOs tend to live in their own little SEO ecommerce shell without realizing that the vast majority of the web doesn't work that way. I would even go so far as to suggest that most commercial sites don't even work that way. The big guys in an industy might, and those in competitive fields might, but most of the smaller companies do not.
There might be some attempt to identify sites involved in link exchanges, but google will never remove the value from simple reciprocal links.
I feel that reciprocal links, in sufficiant numbers, are a signiture of SEO work. At best ill advised and worst dangerous.
Agreed. But the key phras in that statement is "in sufficient numbers". I don't think, well chosen, reciprocal links which are on topic or closely related to your site theme are at all dangerous. In fact, I don't think linking to sites which are "like" yours and even selling the same "type" of product are dangerous at all ... as long as they are not in direct competition with you.
Linking to sites which your customer is likely to be interested in is good customer service and helps make your site somewhat of an authority in a given field. Provided you don't stretch what may be considered "related" too far ... what could possibly be wrong with that?
Do we build sites for the search engines or for our customers?
