Effect of incoming links from poor quality sites.

Its their choice to link, why should it cause any damage?

[Philiboy]

Is it true that the Pagerank for a site might drop if you get incoming links from poor (low pagerank) sites? Because any webmaster can choose to link to my site, why should that cause any damage to my pagerank? I can understand it if I loose a substantial number of good quality links, but what if these are not affected?

If I'm unsure of the quality of a site inviting me to submit my url, should I do it? Would it be damaging, for example, to submit my url to www.uklinks.org? Are links from these common directory sites / shopping sites OK?

[fathom]

Is it true that the Pagerank for a site might drop if you get incoming links from poor (low pagerank) sites?

hmmm... not one ounce of truth there! Nothing pointing to you can hurt you.

Because any webmaster can choose to link to my site, why should that cause any damage to my pagerank?

Yup - and if competitor could point something bad to you they would.

I can understand it if I loose a substantial number of good quality links, but what if these are not affected?

Zero chance of anything negative happening.

If I'm unsure of the quality of a site inviting me to submit my url, should I do it? Would it be damaging, for example, to submit my url to www.uklinks.org? Are links from these common directory sites / shopping sites OK?

If you lost the toolbar - how does the site you wish link to compare... if it doesn't look like a scam (or spam) the likelihood that your gut is correct -- is extremely good.

In the grand scope of things - there really are very few penalized and/or banned websites/pages.

[Philiboy]

Thanks, fathom. So incoming links from a site with lower pagerank isn't damaging. But, I'm now wondering if it is beneficial to reciprocate with a site with a lower PR. I understand that such a link will contribute very little to increasing my pagerank, but are the following true or false?
1) Linking to a site with lower pagerank than yourself will have a detrimental effect on your own pagerank, even if it is a quality (non-pornographic etc.) and relevant website.
2) Linking to as many quality, relevant websites as possible (irrespective) of their pagerank will increase a sites link-popularity.

All I am trying to find out, in a nutshell, is whether I should ignore sites of equal and lower pagerank than my own site when trying to improve my link popularity.

[MonkeeSage]

I thought that if a penalized site linked to you your PR is dropped, because even if the source of the link wasn't counted against you, it would have absolutely 0 PR and would thus add one more link to your count, but without adding any PR, so when it is calculated across all the other links in the index, you will lose a bit (just like for dead outbound links). Thus if ten 'bad' sites linked to you on five different pages each...?

Jordan

[buckworks]

You can drive yourself crazy trying to micromanage PR and decide whether this link or that will be more advantageous for PR.

Relax: everything will change anyway as links come and go for both you and your link partners. Base your linking decisions on quality and relevance, and leave Page Rank to sort out itself. Use the time you save to work on your site and cultivate other links.

[Philiboy]

I'm planning to run a link popularity service, so its important to get a clear understanding. My plan is to get my customers 25 quality reciprocal links. The set of 25 links would be to sites of higher pagerank (otherwise the customer won't be happy). During the process of finding these links, there will be some of lower pagerank, but as it is no loss to myself and there is little additional work involved, I thought I'd give these to the customer as well, excluding them from the set of 25, as added value to my service. I obviously wouldn't want to do this if they aren't of any benefit to the customer, or lower my standards of service.
Sounds like from buckworks comments (thanks) that the above would be a good idea i.e. giving the customer the additional lower PR links, as long as the sites are of good quality and relevant.
The next problem is working out how much to charge the customer. As well as finding the links, I anticipate preparing email requests, filling out request forms, maintaining a check list of links and associated info in a database, preparing the HTML for the links, getting the customers approval. A lot of work - could take a week!

[dougmcc1]

MonkeeSage, as far as I know PR isn't an average of the PR's of sites linking to you. They all get added up. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, or confirm that I'm not.

[sun818]

How about "bad neighbors"? I once had a porn site link to me which caused them to show up when I clicked on "Similar Pages" on the major search engine. :(

[Marcia]

I don't care for having bad type sites link in.

1) Linking to a site with lower pagerank than yourself will have a detrimental effect on your own pagerank, even if it is a quality (non-pornographic etc.) and relevant website.

No it won't have a detrimental effect on your own PR unless you're linking out to penalized sites and involved in bad neighborhoods and dodgy linking practices.

The number of links out on a page will only affect the amount of PR distributed to the pages linked to, including those within your own site.

2) Linking to as many quality, relevant websites as possible (irrespective) of their pagerank will increase a sites link-popularity.

No, many quality, relevant sites as possible linking TO your site will increase its PR and link popularity. Linking out to those sites has other benefits, but doesn't help your link pop & PR other than the fact that they may link back and having quality outbound links might encourage others to link to you. In and of itself it doesn't do that.

You can drive yourself crazy trying to micromanage PR and decide whether this link or that will be more advantageous for PR.

That's the truth! You can also see where some sites have great inbound links and no problem with outbounds, but their own internal linking structure is killing them.

[Philiboy]

Thanks Marcia. Sorry, I meant linking TO (my site or my client's site) and not linking FROM. In conclusion, then I would still be doing my client a service by finding him or her links from lower PR sites (as long as they are of good quality and relevant) i.e. I concentrate on the higher PR links but don't reject the lower PR links because the latter still serve to boost link popularity even if they don't help improve his PR. Is that the correct conclusion?

[buckworks]

Low PR links WILL help to build PR, it just takes more of them.

[Marval]

It would seem to me that not worrying about PR as someone mentioned and just getting good quality links is most important...worry about the other 100 things that can improve your position as I can guarantee you that PR has nothing whatsoever to do with profit or ROI....how would you know what the PR is since no one is sure yet if the toolbar is correct?

[Philiboy]

I suppose,Marval, it's just analogous to other things in life. When choosing an accountant, its best to choose a certified one; wine - choose appellation controllee. So if I provide a link popularity service, my client is going to prefer links from sites with a relatively high PR. Even in the event of the client not seeing any improvement, he or she'll have evidence that I've used some criteria for choosing the links. There will be good accountants who aren't certified and excellent french wines with no AC certification, but its easier to base the choice on some accreditation.
And then there is evidence that Google ranks sites with higher PR above those with lower PR - isn't that a good reason to focus on PR? I might be wrong, because I'm still learning.
I agree, however, that there are many other factors to take into account which is why I'll be providing my clients with keyword analysis, code and content optimisation, submission services etc.

[moltar]

How about FFAs? I've heard that it can ruin your PR and ranking.

Any competitor can download a program that submits to thousands of FFAs in minutes.

[trillianjedi]

How about FFAs? I've heard that it can ruin your PR and ranking.

Nope. No harm caused whatsoever.

Read fathoms post (#2 in thread) that sums it all up, especially:-

Nothing pointing to you can hurt you.

TJ

[canucks1980]

I have been collecting links for a very long time. Enough to know that if you get enough of them your PR will eventually change. Here is my synopsis of google. I could be wrong but my evidence points to this: 100 or less links = PR5
100-1000 = PR6 If you have 1000-2500 = PR7 If you have over 2500 PR8 and if you can get 5000+ links you could get PR 9. The site must also have a lot of content: 200+ Pages. and a good title. If you would like to see how my formula works go here: [marketleap.com...] You will see for yourself that the mid range sites with 1500 links in google are about a PR 7. Most of these sites have lots of original content.

[buckworks]

Philiboy, your certification analogy is interesting, but the parallel is shaky because what the toolbar says about PR is not always reliable.

Develop your own instincts about what makes a good wine or a good web link and look at any "certification" as a bonus.

So if I provide a link popularity service, my client is going to prefer links from sites with a relatively high PR

Only if that's all you teach them to value.

The point of cultivating links is to increase the number of targeted, interested visitors. Does traffic increase after a link campaign? Do sales increase? THAT's how to measure success. PR is only one tool in the toolbox.

This is a true story: I have a client who manufactures elegant widgets. I've managed his PPC campaigns since last winter, and I get to see where his other traffic comes from too. One of his top ten referrers -- consistently over several months -- is a link from a retailer of widgets. When I first checked, the retailer's home page was PR2, and internal pages were PR1 or PR0. (They've risen since then.) I'm glad whoever asked for that link looked at more than just PR: The retailer does a lot of highly effective off-line promotion, even managing to get his site "widgetpalace.com" mentioned on Oprah.

PR is only one tool in the toolbox.

[Marval]

"And then there is evidence that Google ranks sites with higher PR above those with lower PR - isn't that a good reason to focus on PR?"

not necessarily....high PR "may" help, but it again, is only one of over 100 factors that go into ranking....and is probably not in the top ten based on experience with low PR sites that way outperform high PR sites in the SERPs.

[Small Website Guy]

PR is extremely important to come out on top of a highly searched phrase or keyword.

On the other hand, someone found my site today with a search term that only pulled one other hit on the entire internet. Obviously PR wasn't very important for that.

[Marval]

I tend to disagree with the conclusion that high PR is needed to rank for competitive words just based on my own rankings...since I rank somewhere in the top 30 for 250 mill results for one of the most competitive terms searched, and my PR is at least 2 less than hundreds of pages behind my ranking. I have seen this across many of my domains and I dont do anything that is against Googles TOS or even borderline...just good quality on page factors and incoming links

The only value I see for PR currently is the frequency of bot visits and depth of those visits