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I gathered some links for one of my sites that I am optimizing these days and most of the sites linked to me from links pages. For quite some time now, I haven't seen any difference at all to my rankings. Earlier I thought that since some pages are PR 0 so it will take some time for the link text to be factored in, but not all the linking pages were PR 0 and besides, it's been quite long now. Some people, including me, have thus begun to feel if google is found a way to make out what links are coming from links pages (may be it checks if there is any content on the page in addition to the links. If there isn't, it's a links page). Any thoughts?
links.htm or similar.
G may be filtering that word.
Now I saw them back in the listing again. So I am a bit confused. Anyone seeing this, too?
To answer your question: last month I think, you was right assuming no counting for links.html, but this month I am not sure at all. Anyone else?
Also be creative in the naming of your links page just in case it's a filter in the future. I've come across some nice variations lately and have adopted them. For that matter they could be abcde.htm as it's not relevant for search placement.
Where do these misconceptions all orginated? Saldy I think it's here.
Dave
I should add that my own links pages have had PR0 for many weeks, rarely get spidered, and are not doing much good for recipients of my links. (All my other pages have PR3 or greater.) This is true despite having linked several other pages on my site to my links pages with the hope of transferring some PR. I even have a PR4 external backlink to my most interesting links page, but it hasn't helped.
My links pages have a substantial amount of non-link text (and are not named links.html, although as I said, I don't believe that matters).
This gives me the impression that new link-heavy pages could be suffering, but I'm just one example.
I doubt very much that Google would ever filter out any pages called "links"!
Why do you doubt that? We all know that Google prefers link quality over link quantity -- and pages titled "links.htm" or something similar are likely to be more about quantity than quality.
Google loves links between 'like' sites so this would go completely against their methodology.
Google prefers contextual links that appear within the actual content of a web page, rather than long lists of links that really aren't as strong an endorsement as a contextual link.
Where do these misconceptions all orginated? Saldy I think it's here.
Nah, it's just an open discussion of ideas. And often, guesses. :)
Why do you doubt that?
The word "Link" is just that, a word. It does not always represent a link farm. You said it yourself "are likely to be ..." note your won use of the word "likely". Google is *far* more sophisticated than NOT passing PR simply because the page is called "links". You don't get to be # 1 by being that simple :o)
Google prefers contextual links that appear within the actual content of a web page, rather than long lists of links that really aren't as strong an endorsement as a contextual link
Probably true, but that's a whole new topic and has nothing to do with filtering out the word "links".
On top of all this, kiril has just posted what shoots down the Filter out links theory.
Dave
It takes time so just give it another month or two.
That said - there are pages that can get into the SERPs and stay there within 5 days of creating the page - depends on so many factors that it would be almost impossible to try to describe the formula.
As mentioned in Bretts original steps to placing well in Google, just keep making content and G will eventually give credit where credit is due.
As far as the "links" pages debate, I can tell you from personal experience that the name of the page has nothing whatsoever to do with placement in the SERPs, credit for backlinks, or anything else that would put you at a disadvantage in G - as well as half of the other supposed "dampening effects" talked about here occasionally
These, in my "opinion" are just easy explanations for impatience.
I happen to believe there's way too much focus on PageRank, but that doesn't diminish the fact that something was going on at the time, even if it was temporary.
In the end, the algo is under constant review and change. It's our job to stay on top of these things as best we can. That's one reason we're all here, I would think.
links.htm pages aren't and have not been penalized, and there are literally millions of examples to look at. Hopefully Google will find a way to penalize all those linksmanager-type "directory" pages, but if they do it will be to address a specific bit of Internet trash, not a plainly good thing like a links page.
Where do these misconceptions all orginated? Saldy I think it's here.Dave
It's not a misconception. Last month thousands of sites who had links from pages called links.htm and links.html 'lost' those links, in the sense that they no longer showed in a link: command, regardless of the pr of the links.htm page. The situation may not be so now, but it was for weeks at least.
whether that means their value was discounted is impossible to know for certain, but they certainly disappeared from the link: serps.
I'll agree with you that google aught to be more sophisticated than that, and we cannot know their reasons for removing these results from the link: serps, but they did. no question. no misconception.
Last month thousands of sites who had links from pages called links.htm and links.html 'lost' those links
But why jump to the drastic conclusion that Google filters out pages called Links.htm? also, how do you know it was thousands of sites........poetic license :o) As said, Google doesn't invest millions just so it can filter out pages called "Links"
Dave
Just a thought.
Nothing to talk about until three months have passed.
I have a links.html page and every single link on it contains additional text (a mini-review from a developers perspective). Each site has been viewed and used by me. It will be of no interest to many of my visitors but that does not mean that Google should treat it as irrelevant simply because of its name.
Google's PR algo inherently works against links pages anyway so why they should feel the need to penalise them further I cannot imagine - unless, of course, they figure that one algo botch can remedy a fault created by another algo botch. As a programmer, trust me on this one, if this sort of thinking is prevalent at Google, don't bid for their shares next year because the end is nigh.
Kaled.
"gathered recently"It's been a month now here. But they should have been factored in by now since the days of monthly update are gone now and serps change almost daily. Besides, I got other links too (not from links pages) and they seem to have made the difference they were supposed to make.
Nothing to talk about until three months have passed.
I feel, as I said earlier, reciprocated links and especially on links pages are suffering. Google can't all of a sudden overlook reciprocated links, but the links pages look so very unnatural from user viewpoint and also are often used to get some PR and link text boost that google might have thought to do something to prevent such pages which don't quite look like a natural part of the web. Links on content pages seem to be alright; reciprocated or not.
poetic license
Hmm. hundreds from first hand knowledge, and tens and tens of other major sites from within the industry tested. not really pushing the poetic license. There was also enough talk of this in the supporters forum.
Not disagreeing that it shows a certain lack of elegance on google's part, in fact, it ranks right up there with the worst hacks I've ever seen. But bad hacks can be just as effective as subtle ones, and if the serps were better, the serps were better, none could argue. You'd have to ask google if they were.
dont make general statements that all links pages are having problems (imho)
I'm perfectly confident that those general statements can be made legitimately in past tense. This month is not the same. Very odd this didn't make it out here until now, though I can only imagine the panic if it had been revealed while fully blown.
would probably be industry specific?
doesn't seem to be industry specific from what I remember of the forum78 thread - [webmasterworld.com...] (godda be signed up)
I don't think google does anything industry specific really... this was just an algo tweak of a different kind.
Also, the serps changing all the time means nothing in terms of updating. Serps change several times a day and datacenters move in and out. That is totally unrelated to Google doing across the board PR and backlink updates, and the changes in serps take place at a different time than when we are showed new PR and backlinks. Forget about these link pages for two months, then look to see the benefits.
Google treats links pages like anything else, ragardless of how they are named. It crawls them, weights them, misses them, passes their PR and everything else like everything else. There have been wild threads here every week the past six months, and all them are now tossed on the rubbish pile. This one is another.
One month means nothing in Google. Expecting links to show their effect in that time is not sensible, and drawing conclusions is seriously bad.I agree that may be it's too soon to jump to conclusion, but as I said, the other links that I had gathered one month ago which were not from the links pages seem to have been factored in, since there is a boost in ranking for the site that has links from content pages. And how can I overlook the fact that on some occasions I have seen a boost in serps even within one week of getting keywords as link text, so I think there is nothing wrong in guessing.
Again, I agree that it might just be too soon to conclude something, but we need to stay on top of things and observe the trend if any, and one month is sufficient time IMHO for an assumption to be made, especially if there is something fishy. Things might be different for different people, but we are here to discuss whatever trend we notice.
Also, I must state again that I don't mean that links on links pages are not being factored in for PR or rankings or not being assigned any PR, but I guess their value might have gone down a bit. Just an assumption from what I am seeing.
May be that threads like this one fire some irrational assumptions and people start to believe what some have to say. So I thought I must make my experience public. Links on links pages are working fine for me, I was just a little quick to jump to conclusions. Sorry if I wasted somebody's time.
