Link from site with greyed-out

[gstewart]

I'm webmaster for a fairly successful tourism accommodation site - good position in Google serps, solid PR5: the site owner wants to pay for a link from a site where the PR bar and Page info button are greyed out. Will this damage my PR or my position in Google results? Thanks..

[rogerd]

In most cases, the sites that link to you won't hurt your PR. There are a couple of issues here, though. Is the link worth paying for, i.e., will it generate enough clicks to make it work? The other site may be new, penalized, or suffer from downtime problems - regardless, it doesn't sound like a premier sort of partner. Also, the link won't help your PR until they get back in the index (if they ever do).

[rogerd]

I might add, gstewart, that this is a good example of a "value added" service you provide by being a SEO-aware webmaster (and WebmasterWorld member :)!).

Owners are usually oblivious to subtleties like PR and PR penalties, and often have only the most rudimentary understanding of how to calculate ROI on a paid ad or link. They hear numbers like, "We guarantee 100,000 views" and think, "Wow, that's fantastic!" without really comparing the cost of the ad, the click through rate, and the conversion rate to orders. You can help him through this quagmire...

[Terry_Plank]

I agree with rogerd that unless they are indexed you won't get any value.

I'm less sure about whether it might hurt you or not. I have been to many conferences where Google representatives have spoken and they have warned all of us to stay away from "bad neighborhoods". They have not fully explained what that means. One thing that is obvious is to not be hosted at an ISP what allows spamming and has been banned.

But, as for individual sites that are grayed out, no one knows what the Google algorighm is set to evaluate regarding links. But, they are evaluating for PR as a key part of their determining who might be a good site and who not, so I always err on the side of caution.

For whatever reason they are grayed out, I would certainly think through the association. One variable for your deliberations might be how many links there are in to your domain. If you have 50 links to you and a couple are questionable it would be different than if there were 2 and both were questionable.

[wasmith]

I am alittle confused which way the link is going?

Do they want to pay you to link to your site? If you can do that and you can teach me how to do that i will worship you forever!

Do they want you to link to them and pay you?

Do thay want you to pay them to link to your site? If they don't have google traffic i would want to know what traffic they do have that is worth paying for?

[Birdman]

I might add, gstewart, that this is a good example of a "value added" service you provide by being a SEO-aware webmaster (and WebmasterWorld member!).

Sorry to go off topic, but I am a proud member and put it in a resume recently. If anything, maybe a new member;)

As for the real post...
>>>Will this damage my PR or my position in Google results?

Not if you don't link back to them, which you shouldn't have to do if you are paying.

[wasmith]

Just FYI, i have a ISP linking to one of my pages that provides more traffic than google <added>for that page not the site</added>, but has virtually no PR so it is useless in google. The ISP gets their site set as the home page and thats where the traffic comes from, but google does not consider non-web traffic sources into account.

[mayor]

If you're smart, you'll look at the quality of the site and gauge it's long term viability and if it looks good and relevant or complementary to yours, consider getting a link from them irregardless of it's Google PR.

There's so much link spamming going on (I get several link requests a day from some of the strangest places) that it's only a matter of time until google starts using link signatures to catch spammers and penalizes their sites.

Going after links from high PR sites on a grand scale is just another form of link farming and we all know what Google has in store for link farmers.

I'm sure all those PhD's at Google could, and probably already have, developed a link signature algorithm that can catch you link spamming in no time.

I say if you want to be a link spammer don't look like one. Look natural. Get links from relevant sites with a natural distribution of the web's Google PR's. Turn off your toolbar when you go surfing for link sources or exchange partners. Forget about Google and get links from sites that look likely to send you valuable link traffic. Even new sites with a grey toolbar may become good sources of link traffic in the near future. I wouldn't even be afraid of a blemished PR0 site if it's part of a natural distribution.

<troll> Heck, even Googleguy can crank up a link signature algo that will leave you with a massive headache if you link spam </troll>.

[Terry_Plank]

Let's not forget that the main reason for getting companies to link to us is to establish business relationships so we get more clients or customers for our products/services. When we do it just to improve PR we are practicing "spam thinking". When we stay with the desire to get pre-qualified traffic from relevant sites, then we are thinking like good strategists. :-)

And we will always know what sites are appropriate for us to have linking to us. And we will know how to approach them without looking like a spammer because we aren't.

Hey, the bottom line is getting good, pre-qualified traffic, Google PR helping with that is a side benefit.