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What I'm thinking is if this is the case will reciprocal links be affected or incoming links from a page named links.htm be affected.
One reason that makes me think maybe this isn't an issue is how easy it would be to rename a page so why bother penalising?!
I'm with you; I don't think there is a filename penalty. As you say, a rename is more likely in the case of "foul play", so doing so would only punish the innocent and valuable links.htm pages. It will be cleverer than that.
Interesting thread, including the posts from Brett. I wouldn't name a page links.htm ...
People who link to you from them will not show up on your backlinks as far I can tell.
try 'companynamelinks.htm'
/bookmarks/
/favorites/
/friends/
/partners/
/resources/
"I used to benefit from a link from a page called link.htm, and now I no longer have that benefit"
..or is it a more concrete:
"I used to benefit from a link from a page called link.htm, then I lost that benefit, and then the webmaster changed the page to resources.html and now I have got the benefit back."
?
Because if nobody has evidence supporting the second statement then I don't know how you can claim to have any evidence that link.htm is penalised simply for being called link.htm....
It's much more intuitive for readers than it might be for them to read something on your site and then find how to navigate to your site's links page and then scan the links page to see if there are any links relevant to what they were just reading about.
Just my $0.02...
Regarding observations I do get credited for some but not all of the reciprocal links from my links.htm page so nothing too conclusive there.
Most link pages are very poorly done. If the PR algo is designed to give importance to pages based on the likelihood you'll end up there by randomly clicking on links... then I think it is safe to say that if most people just click back when confronted with a humongous list of links, G might just discount their value.
Too often, those pages are not designed for humans. If they were organized and commented might they pass on PR?
We should test these theories. Who has links pages that are currently not transferring PR? Will you either rename or add content to them and report back on results?
They are also links pages in the traditional sense of a place where I put links that I want to. It is not used for trading links.
There is far too much tradition behind the name links for Google to go after a solution like just going after it because of that name.
Our experience: On a bunch of directory sites, our links.asp pages were blitzed with loss of PR, from 2 to 0. They were pretty obviously links pages, primarily for recip linking purposes...*but* all links were tighly related to each site's subject.
After the loss of PR, I went digging in WW and found the link I posted above, along with quite a few other threads on the subject. We changed the name of the page, and also added some text ads and a minor bit of content, on the theory that if they *looked* like links pages, they were potentially dangerous now. I have a feeling that other measures related to linking are at play here too.
Anyway, two months later, all of the new links pages came back with PR 3. Could be coincidence. But I'll never name another new page links.asp again. Would I rename a current page if it's working well? No absolutely not. If it's not broken; don't fix it. Would I rename a links.asp page if I saw drops in PR anytime since FL? Well, hmmmm...let me think...YES!
;-)
Look at it this way. It can't hurt to call the links page something other than links.htm. Also, even if you are convinced Google doesn't penalize for this, it is possible some other search engine does, or will start doing so in the future.
But if you are calling your links pages something else than links.ext AND adding content, you're probably covering all your bases! :)
I believe I was not completely wrong then, but now, after looking for several hours, I have not found a single links.htm or links.html (or links.php either but I wasn't looking for .php when I searched) that shows as a backlink ON ANOTHER DOMAIN. And these pages are definitely not passing PR. Theses pages do continue to show as backlinks *within* a single domain... which is interesting in itself.
While as always exceptions might exist, if I was making a page today, I certainly would not name it links.html or links.htm Since a links.html almost never is a page you want to rank well, naming it 7p3f.html or any gibberish would be a good idea.
I would suggest calling all brand-new links pages, "external.htm", or something like that, with any associated files, (jpg's etc), also external_1.jpg, just to be on the safe side.
lots of wive's tails can sometimes get perpetuated in here
You got something against monkeys as intimate partners? One of those ape-lovers eh... ;-)
steveb, you're kidding, right?
My own site has the member's links page that makes all the target pages a PR4 and the links.php shows as a backlink.
Here is another one
[travel.state.gov...]
In fact, can we now hoard PR by calling our links page 'links.htm'?
linksdustbinforlinks
whichibeggedoffathousand
othersitesbutwhichIdonot
imagineanyofmyhumanreaders
willeverfindonmysitebut
whocaresbecauseiamin
itforthepagerank.html
Whoops! Apologies for not breaking it up the first time around!
[edited by: ronin at 2:22 pm (utc) on Jan. 13, 2004]
When I first loaded the page, my heart sunk thinking the page widening troll had struck here too. But ronin, your post is quite funny!
I believe that would get rid of the horizontal scroll bar for this page.
This is certainly true of the industry i work in.
