Reciprocal Links

Why does Google not list all of the Reciprocal links to my site

[Red_Eye]

I have been working hard to get Reciprocal links to my site. I have checked that they are in place. However when I check on google to see who is linking to my site I only see a single link from demoz.

Is this something to do with the way reciprocal links have been set up on the other sites?

[Sinner_G]

Well, first thing is to check whether those sites are in the google index at all.

Then, I guess you checked with the link: search. AFAIK this only gives the sites linking to you AND having a PR of 4 or higher (not sure of the 4 though).

[Red_Eye]

Thanks that Makes sense. I have checked that they are in google (That’s how I found them). Although I have not yet checked there PR Rating.

[britnick]

The whole issue of links keeps coming up - there are loads of interesting threads. trouble is, some of the information is contradictory:-)

For example, most people agree on the PR 4 issue, but Dmoz and Yahoo seem to be an exception to the rule.

Also, some sites don't show any links *at all* - even though the relevant sites may exist in the index and carry PR of greater than 4. There is a suggestion that this means that the site is being penalised. Does any body know for sure?

Assuming:

1 There are links in place

2 They have PR > four

3 Google has had several months to find them

4 The referring pages are in the index

5 Google says there are no links when the standard 'show Backward links' method is used

Does this definitely mean somebody at Google Towers is unhappy?

[DaveN]

I heard a rumour that google is adding a few areas in which links don't count.

Check to make sure that you are getting good quality links, The sort where you need to get hold of the webmaster ;)

DaveN

[Mohamed_E]

Make sure they are "real" links rather than javascript, which Google does not follow.

[zeus]

I just got listed on Yahoo-directory Im looking forward to see if it realy gives a boost to ranking like some says.

Red_Eye

Do a search like this:

site:http://www.yourdomain.com "your single keyword"

and you will see all links to you under PR4

zeus

[rogerd]

>>I heard a rumour that google is adding a few areas in which links don't count.<<

DaveN, what kind of areas do you mean - topics, types of link pages, etc?

[DaveN]

certain type of sites and commonly named pages.

it's trying to combat the google bombing...

DaveN

[rogerd]

Ahhh, the googlebomb fix... thanks.

[Bernie]

Zeus:
>>site:http://www.yourdomain.com "your single keyword"
>>and you will see all links to you under PR4

IMVHO this query will only show the pages on red_eye's own website that contain this keyword.

Red_Eye,
you could check inbound-links with FAST:

[alltheweb.com...] link.all:http://www.yourdomain.com

What do you think about this option:
- Google does index the pages linking towards you.
- the pages have PR4 or bigger so should be shown
but:
the links are just to new so google hasn't indexed the last version with the links to you yet.

[Alby]

I heard a rumour that google is adding a few areas in which links don't count.

I am very interested in that statement, (though I realise that I am not interpreting it like DaveN meant it), and I am curious to know if anyone else has any proof in this direction?

This last update we lost out heavily on PR. Let's say for this discussion that we went from a very strong PR6 to a weak PR5. I know it was a strong PR 6 because we were recently PR7, and all other main pages apart from the index page were also PR 6. We lost PR despite the fact that all our links are intact and we have a number of new high quality links in this update. I realise that our PR could have been diluted by other new web sites etc., but I think the drop is too dramatic for that.

My theory is that Google might have started to look for links at the very top or bottom of a page, and either not counting the PR of those links, or degrading the value of the PR from those links. The reason would be that a link at the very bottom or very top of a page could often be a paid advertisement.

This is just a theory and I have no proof, it is just that I can't find any other explanation for our large PR drop.

BTW, our rankings have improved despite the PR drop so I am not overly concerned, but if anyone else is seeing similar unexplained drops we could try to take steps to make sure our links are not from the very top or bottom.

What do you think?

[Bernie]

from what I have seen I wouldn't confirm this: sites I've been working with had changes in pr before the recent major algo-shift plus I've seen pages with same or even higher PR after the last update that had especially inbound-links from footers (bottom of page). whereas my own site lost a bit PR having inbounds from mostly various positions of the pointing pages.

In my experience PR is very dynamic. A change of PR in the sites pointing to you or the loss of one important inbound-link (link from a site with high PR) can change your own easily. the algo-shift was big - but I wouldn't go so far.

Anyhow I am seeing many pages with lower PR beating pages with lower PR on the SERP. PR alone was never the dominating factor.

google-bombing: I think google's biggest concern was that sites were ranked well under a keyword they didn'
t dealt with at all. Requiring the same keyword as in the anchor-text of the inbounds at least showing up also in text of the link-receiving page google did already a fine job to fix that problem.

[quotations]

Another question: Does google periodically just clean out all the links and start over?

I had one page which showed over 700 inbound links (even though there were over 1000) three months ago and then two months ago the number shown dropped down to 112 and then last month it was 246 and this month it is more than 350.

Is this a quarterly thing? Am I suddenly going to have only 27 links showing even though it is now up to over 3000 in reality?

[Alby]

I've seen pages with same or even higher PR after the last update that had especially inbound-links from footers (bottom of page).

That is interesting, what are other peoples experiences with links from the top or bottom of pages?