Link Popularity

whick links really count?

[dallas371]

I have been wondering for awhile about this. I have many partner sites that are held with in my site (each of which have a link to our home page: 'mysite'.com). Each of these partner sites have a unique url registered, such as 'partnersite'.com, however, we use url forwarding from those unique urls to our url where their site is (www.'mysite'.com/'partnersite'.htm).

My question is: do the links from these 'partner' sites to our homepage count towards our link popularity, or are they simply considered links within our own site to our home page?

Likewise, do the links on 'mysite'.com to 'partnersite'.com count towards link popularity for 'partersite'.com (which forwards to www.'mysite'.com/'partnersite'.htm)?

Many thanks in advance.

[martinibuster]

I don't understand the question...

[glengara]

It does sound somewhat complicated......

[dallas371]

I was afraid this would come off as confusing. OK. If you were to type in www.'partnersite'.com in IE, that url would forward you to that site at www.'mysite'.com/partnersite.html.

So would a link to www.'mysite'.com on that site count towards link popularity for 'mysite'.com?

please don't hesitate to let me know if this still isn't making sense.

[martinibuster]

It should. Just make sure that the page, on which the link to you is found, has pagerank. Remember to verify the PageRank of that page by using your google toolbar.

[Slade]

What kind of forward are you using? (I can't even guess what the right answer to this would be, but it's worth asking.)

If I type in www.'partnersite'.com, does my browser get redirected to www.'mysite'.com/partner.html, Or does it continue to say 'partnersite'.com?

[quiet_man]

If I understand you correctly, there are no actual pages at "www.partnersite.com". It is just a domain with web forwarding?

So your link to "mysite.com" is actually an internal link, coming from the page "mysite.com/partnersite.html" to the page "mysite.com/index.html"?

So you will get the same benefit as any other internal link (?).

[prejudice]

Short simple answer to your first question: Yes

[whats up skip]

From my experience you seem to be better off if partner sites are actually in completely different domains. External links seem to count much more than internal links (as they would be currently).

If you change to different domains expect some pain to start with. You will then have to do a bit of link building from other sites.

Google currently seems to have a bias to micro sites (external links) rather than mega site (a home page with lots of external links and then internal links to other pages).

[dallas371]

Thanks everyone for the great info. This one's been driving me crazy! To answer a couple questions.

Slade: Yes, when you type in www.'partnersite'.com, your browser is directed to www.'mysite'.com/partnersite.html. We are thinking of using url 'masking' though. In this case you would still be directed to www.'mysite'.com/partnersite.html, but the browser would continue to read www.'partnersite'.com

quiet man: yes, I was also thinking that these links wouldn't do a whole lot of good because they are technically internal links. I guess i was wondering if google wouldn't see it as an external link, even though a unique url can be used to get to the 'parter site'.

Thanks

[kaz]

I guess i was wondering if google wouldn't see it as an external link, even though a unique url can be used to get to the 'parter site'.

Just two cents, I have a few sites with a similar whacky setup like yours and my experience is that it all depends on how google is listing the particular pages in question. Because of your setup two options are possible:

'partersite'.com
www.'mysite'.com/partnersite.html

My experience is that it all depends on how googlebot spiders your site the first time. For example, if it indexes partnersite.com the first time around it identifies with those links in future crawls - and if it gets to your mysite.com location then it will default to the partnersite and only list the one (other being dupe content presumably).

If google is listing partnersite.com those links would then count as external links. Otherwise internal links.