Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Can anyone please tell me if sites that are linking to you that have a Google PR of 0 hurt you? While doing the link:MyDomain.com in G still shows only about 19 for me, (from some reason down from over 600 of May 20th), I did this command in Y (about 800) and browsed the results. The vast majority of the sites I didn't even know existed and I never new they were linking to me. Most of those I checked had a PR of 0. So I'm wondering if this is a bad thing.
Thanks.
(I also noticed something rather interesting while doing this; when clicking the links in Y results, regardless of link the G toolbar always shows a PR of 0! I know there is a Yahoo 302 redirect of links [which is rather disturbing], but the link of course resolves to the real URL. Apparently the G PR is not seeing the actual URL, but the Y redirect!)
So what do you think G has done with almost 600 of my backlinks?
Kaled.
I understood that your website can suffer if a penalised site or "bad neighbourhood" site links to it, so those sites with a PR of 0 may be of harm, however the other category of sites will be of no harm. People were certainly talking about the dangers of links from poisonous sites and bad neighbourhoods a couple of years ago. Whether or not this is still a problem I don't know.
Arthur, do you know if in the cases of questionable links if the <a href=oneofthebadlinks.com rel="nofollow">Link text</a> tag would help with these sites, as in you not getting hurt by G?
So just how is one supposed to find which of these PR 0 sites are possibly penalized?
Thanks.
Mike
I understood that your website can suffer if a penalised site or "bad neighbourhood" site links to it
This is one of the most prevalent myths going. I think it was from someone (or several someones) confusing what CAN hurt your site - linking FROM your site TO a "bad neighborhood" URL or link farm. Links FROM the bad page TO you cannot hurt you. At worst, they give you no help.
I got this very explanation from GoogleGuy quite awhile ago when I asked in another forum. Take it or leave it.
With regards to YOU linking to sites that may be questionable: Can anyone tell me if in the cases of questionable links if the <a href=oneofthebadlinks.com rel="nofollow">Link text</a> tag would help with these sites, as in you not getting hurt by G?
When I say "questionable", I don't mean porn, but sites with niches normally associated with spamming, like financial sites, mortgage sites, online degrees, etc.
Thanks.
this is completely wrong use of the rel attribute within the <a> tag
i doubt a search spider would know what you even mean.
to find out about what the rel attribute is actually for read this page
[w3.org...]
I had the same from 780 down to 24 during Bourbon where it has stayed. A "link www.yourdomain.com" (without the colon) seems far more accurate both in terms of numbers and actual linking site reporting
Cheers
Simmo!
-it's the pipe symbol. :)
tallis
Kaled.
One of the clues is to do site:thatdomain.com. If that site appeared to exist for a period of time, but no page indexed in Google then foul smell is there.
BUT please be forwarned that it won't worth your time to check every site just for the sake of wanting to know if it was penalized or not, related to the open topic of this thread.
thanks, if that is the case i stand corrected ...
however the question is, if you are putting links on your site why would you not want a search spider to follow them?
(i'm not making a moral/ethical point, that is another issue)
if i was a search engine such behaviour would raise a red flag to me
Maybe because you are running a forum and do not want the forum members to be able to spam the s/e with signatures and don't dare to use other means to "hide" the links.
Maybe because you have additional navigation for visitor use that the s/e may consider as duplicate content due to urls being different dynamic content delivery has its downsides.
Maybe because the page the link goes to might be considered a keyword laden doorway page.
It really is getting well past the point of building a site for visitors, in doing that you will eventually walk into a "s/e gotcha" unless the site is very small.
Most of our newest site is off limits to the search engines, and it is a royal pain to keep track of.
Clint,
To answer your question, it isn't the PR 0 sites linking to you that you have to worry about.
It is _how_ any site links to you that you have to worry about.
Now if Google actually implements its inbound link counting and a sudden uptick in inbounds is then used to quality rank lower the target of the inbound links (as per the patent application) then there will be a major problem.
You can only control your end of the link, not the other end.
by a red flag i mean just that, as a stand alone factor it wouldn't mean anything, but combined with other red flags it would perhaps have some significance.
What I don't understand is why G had me with over 600 links, then dropped it to 19
I had the same from 780 down to 24 during Bourbon where it has stayed. A "link www.yourdomain.com" (without the colon) seems far more accurate both in terms of numbers and actual linking site reporting
Hey thanks! Never heard of that before. When I do it that way I show over 800, but a quick look shows they are not all actual links. But, nonetheless still MUCH more accurate that what we've been doing at G. I've just been doing it a Y instead since it seems to show all links correctly.
Tallis, that doesn't work on my end. I got over 1.5 million results (using the Shift + \ key which is "¦"), and my domain appeared no where in them! Then I tried the ¦ symbol and got zero.
>>>>Can anyone tell me if in the cases of questionable links if the <a href=oneofthebadlinks.com rel="nofollow"> <<<<<<this is completely wrong use of the rel attribute within the <a> tag
i doubt a search spider would know what you even mean.
to find out about what the rel attribute is actually for read this page
[w3.org...]I picked up that tag here at this forum. I searched that URL you gave for "nofollow" and I didn't see it anywhere. So, what do you recommend instead of that tag? I see Kaled said it's fine (thanks Kaled), but I'd like your input as well if you've heard anything bad about it. ;)
Google has had problems related to redirect handling.
And when the redirects haven't caused problems webmasters have had problems with them being used.
What is a webmaster to do?
Drop back 20 and punt?
The rel="nofollow" is an extension to the html spec that the three major search engines support in an effort to stop so called blog spam.
It is used to create a link to a page that is not relavent to the topic at hand.
however the question is, if you are putting links on your site why would you not want a search spider to follow them?
For the reasons we were discussing; "questionable" sites. See my original post again for background, and I think I mentioned that in my link exchanges I wanted to possibly block some links from SE's because someone said that linking to a bad neighborhood can be bad. I don't want them to delete MY link at their site, so I have to leave theirs at mine but I don't want an SE following it. (See my msg #10).
indeed :) and i'm aware of what you say. i'd agrre with you, often it is just choosing the best from a bunch of less than ideal solutions to a problem.
Regarding:
To answer your question, it isn't the PR 0 sites linking to you that you have to worry about.It is _how_many site links to you that you have to worry about
Did you leave out the "m" now in bold? Are you saying that too many is not good, or not enough is not good....or something else all together? :)
Thanks.
The question of many is yet another topic for discussion , my remark was as written the m is not missing.
Ok, I do understand "how_any site links to you that you have to worry about" was not a typo. But do you mean the method in which they link to you, like with a 302 hijack or something like that?
The question of many is yet another topic for discussion
