Is hidden internal links page good or bad?

Interlinks all pages on 3 sites.

[artdog]

I have 3 bluewidget sites, each site addresses the different types of bluewidgets so link together naturally. All are PR3 at one time PR4 with many pages holding the same PR. Now PR3 and many pages
losing PR some to PR0.

Have a link page only seen by searchengines and linked
to from index only. Have one on each site they all contain the same links which are to each page on all sites. Has PR3. After doing some reading on this site.
(I'm going to have to join, getting to much good to not give back, thanks to all.) I'm thinking this page may not be a good idea.

I've only recently found one site in the SERPS at 187.
Should I get rid of this? Do you think this may be how I went from PR4 - 3?

Thanks

[Marcia]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, artdog! Nice to have you with us, glad you're enjoying the site and the Google forum.

It really isn't a good idea to have anything hidden on sites, why chance it? A site map should be an index of the pages in the site it's on - and that's it.

In your place I'd ditch the way you're doing it, put a visible link on each index page to a site map that's got *only* the pages on the site itself - with *maybe* a single link to the index pages of other sites if it's of benefit to users.

[artdog]

Okay, I deleted those pages. As far as hidden it was only from visitors unless they were looking for it.

I'm hope by deleting those pages my page rank restores.

It is strange that I'm all over Yahoo MSN and Hotbot in the top ten and even number one for several keywords but zip on Google. Perhaps this is part of the problem.