Will I get banned by Google?

Link to page with zero PR

[troi21]

I have exchanged links with a website with some relevance to the products and services I offer. I noticed that the home page of the site has a PR of 5 and the links page (where their link to my site is now) has a grey toolbar and is not currently ranked by google. Is it possible that I might suffer somehow? I have placed a link to them on my links page. Should I get rid?

[fathom]

The page containing your link to you is "unranked" while the site itself is "rank" tends to indicate that the page has been intentionally made to "not rank"... whether by the Robot Tag indicating noindex or excluded by robot.txt.

As far as negatively affect you... unlikely, but the link provided to you is only providing potential visitation and no PageRank.

[troi21]

do you think they might have done this to ensure they don't give page rank to the sites listed on their link page? (going with the theory that outbound links leak your page rank)

[fathom]

There could be many reasons for this one of which is avoiding a site introduction of "a links page" in search engines.

There is always a chance that the webmaster/site owner is attempting to manipulate PageRank so that only their own pages benefit, but this can also be just "no common knowledge".

Another example of just "bad design" - a friend had me look at his site to provide feedback. The entire site was JavaScript -links and everything which Googlebot can not read, thus Google would only (possibly) see a single page.

[EasyCall]

Check the site's robots.txt file to see if they have disallowed the link directory. This happened to me a few days back with a PR7 page. Since this was a site for web master tools, it was obviously a scum bag attempt to gain PR without giving any in return.

[percentages]

In competitive cats this type of activity is common place. I could name over 100 sites that have requested reciprocal links and then having got them have deliberately removed their links page from the Google index or changed it in such a way as it adds no value to PR for the recipient. Often a year passes before they make the change.

I am fast going off reciprocal links for this very reason. Monitoring all of these cowboys takes too much time.

Provide good content and some sites will give you a one way link because of it. Give one way links yourself to other sites that complement yours and all will be well in both the eyes of Google and your visitors :)

[Dante_Maure]

Is it possible that I might suffer somehow? I have placed a link to them on my links page. Should I get rid?

Even if their links page was penalized you wouldn't have anything to worry about... unless you are linking to that specific page.

I'm assuming that you've linked to their home page and not their links page?

If so, the only thing you need to worry about is whether this is a dodgy link partner who is intentionally blocking any PR benefit to you by making their links page unindexable.

(Pretty sure "unindexable" isn't a word, but you get the point. lol ;))

[fathom]

unindexable "un-index-able" - definition - a device normally serves as a pointer for valuable information which some moron now believes he can cornered the indicated value by depreciating the value to others. (also a physical feature or a mode of expression) that leads one to a particular fact or conclusion : no PageRank returned.