Google Spidering My Outbound Links?

[ronin100]

Hi,
I have posted this question so many times and no one has answered it yet:
I have reciprocal link partners listed on a page of my site. I had a PR5 on the page and now it is PR4 for a few weeks now, so the links should still show in my partners' links on Google but they don't and haven't ever that I know. I code them to open in their own window and there is nothing to disallow spidering the page or anything I can see wrong with it. E.G.
<A HREF="http://www.example.com" target="_new">example.com</A> - Features XYZ's and more!

Will Google follow this and give them PR from my site? I only do this to give my customers a peek before they take off completely.
Thanks!
ronin100

[edited by: ciml at 8:25 pm (utc) on Mar. 30, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified domains. [/edit]

[ciml]

I've never heard of target=_new preventing PageRank from passing. You say you waited a few weeks; I'd expect to wait one, or two backlink updates from adding the link.

[Powdork]

I have posted this question so many times and no one has answered it yet:

Dude, you have, like, 2 posts. I guess there could have been some posts in update threads that don't count towards your total, but be patient. Same goes for the backlinks, Be Patient.

[ronin100]

Hi!
I should have prefaced that with "at several forums". I love to learn at the webmaster forums and have stopped "lurking" here and registered. I'd just like to add that my outbound links, coded as above, have been in place for about 2 1/2 years. I have never had a complaint but I do check my partners URL's in Google and my links have never showed up. I had a PR5 links page all of that time until 3 weeks ago....I got an across the board reduction! Ouch! The link page is still PR4 and my intent is not to "shaft" anyone I trade a link with. I think I've waited long enough for them to kick in ;) Thanks for responding to a poorly written post!

[steveb]

My 45 seconds of detective work reveal that your page is called links.html and those are usually not passing PR or showing as backlinks. Change its name to something else.

[ronin100]

Thanks a lot! That jogged my memory of reading another post and the very same thing was mentioned in a vague context which I was unable to figure out and now I know what they were talking about! I'll change it! Thanks for the info! Now I can research a few links that should be showing up for my sites too.

[Powdork]

steveb brings up a likely cause but the behavior he mentioned has not existed nearly that long.

Here are some things to look for.

Does your site use frames? If so, toolbar PR may not reflect the PR of the frameset you are linking from.

Occasionally I will start a new page by changing the name and content of an existing page. Once, I did this from a page that had index, nofollow in the robots meta tag. It could happen.

Run your page through an html validation tool and/or a spider simulator to see what happens.

[ronin100]

Thanks Powdork!
I'm on it! While I do that, I should mention that I have 4 PR5&6 sites that haven't showed up in my backlinks for a long time, maybe from the before the end of last year. All 4 sites had their links pages coded with the suffix: /links.html such as [exampledomain...] it sounds likely but I also want to validate that there is nothing else existing that would cause this....before I contact anyone saying crazy stuff about their links pages. It feels like the right answer though. BTW, I don't have frames.

[ronin100]

I checked both of my current sites and there is no problem with the spider simulator Lynx. Another one did show me that one of my sites which has a graphic "Top Nav Bar" that includes the link to my links page (supposedly not viewable to spiders) but it picks up the site map(index), which does give access to the links page. Getting out the rope and chair and heading for the ceiling fan.... :(

[ILuvSrchEngines]

>such as [exampledomain...] it sounds likely but I also want to validate that there is nothing else existing that would cause this

I have found that the 'link' command is a bit picky and may or may not give good results.

Try doing things like

link: example.com
link: www.example.com
link: [example.com...]
link: [example.com...]
link: example/links.html
link: www.example/links.html
link: [example...]
link: [example...]

Maybe one of those will show what you are looking for.

[edited by: ciml at 9:24 am (utc) on Mar. 31, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified domains. [/edit]

[Powdork]

there should not be a space after the link: in the link command

If there is a space you are not doing a special search, you are only doing a regular google search for pages relevant to the query.

[ILuvSrchEngines]

>there should not be a space after the link: in the link command

ahhhhh Thanks for the info! My bad.

[ILuvSrchEngines]

Hmmm, I get much better results when I do it incorrectly with the space for some reason. No results for my test site when done correctly. Looks like the link command is wacky here.

[ronin100]

Thanks all!
I'm going to create new link pages and copy & paste the code in the new pages called "Resources" for now and delete the old page, see if that works in a month or so.

[steveb]

Call it 123.html or anything random

[ILuvSrchEngines]

>Call it 123.html or anything random

Thanks... I am now renaming all my 'links.***' pages also after seeing your post and reading up on this issue on previous threads. If not one thing it's another...arggh I am going to try 'sites.***' and hope that is not a bad word.