Off-topic forum backlinks

Can they be detrimental?

[roodle]

Hi,

After studying some of the pages that are linking back to one of my sites, I've noticed that there are quite a few from forums where my client has included a link to her site (with good intentions of course). I wouldn't normally query this, but I'm wondering whether this kind of activity can be detrimental to a site. The forums are typically "neutral" and not related to the actual business area the site deals with, and often G has indexed each thread reply as a different page such that the link is picked up for each one (could be seen as spammy?).

Anyone know whether this could be a problem?

[roodle]

Any thoughts anyone?

[Marketing Guy]

Zero impact - too easy to be abused for positive or negative effect.

MG

[Munster]

Hmm, not sure about zero impact (remember google bombing, that still works) but I definately cant see how they can be detrimental, far too easy to abuse.

[roodle]

Ok, thanks guys.

So, if they aren't detrimental, how does G deal with so many backlinks from a site that's unrelated to the site in question? Do they count towards homepage PR? Is it a case of "any old link counts for something" provided it's not from a link farm/black-listed site?

I think the site I'm refering to is sandboxed anyway (launched Nov 2004). Perhaps I'm clutching at straws looking for reasons why G isn't indexing the site properly...

[Munster]

well if you search in G for 'New Cars' the first few results would indicate to me that niether backlink quantity or PR make any difference.

[Marketing Guy]

OK perhaps "zero" was a little strong - "negligble" would be more appropriate. I also dont think Googlebombing is an appropriate analogy - it's carried out on much different scales - more links, more domains, more IPs, obscure search terms, generally low competition, etc.

Regardless of all that, my point was I don't think the web is at the point yet where we need to worry about using signatures on forums. There are plenty of 1k+ posters on forums that have links to their site. There are also art type sites that provide free signatures which link to profiles on the art site and these are used en mass on some sites (literally tens of thousands of inbound links from individual forums to one site). Definitely not a problem (and the target site in question doesn't seem to have gained much benefit from the links).

If your site isn't being indexed properly, it's not an inbound link problem - the only way external links can impact indexing is if you don't have any and Google can't find your site by other means.

MG

[Lorel]

Most forum software produces code that prevents PR.

[bobmark]

Sorry, slightly OT.

Anyone have any idea why a Google search: link:www.widgets.com shows zero backlinks

However, a Google search: link:www.widgets.com/index.shtml shows normal backlinks
(which is what used to show for link:www.widgets.com).

Far as I know nothing has changed (site was fine for 4+ years) and all my backlinks (other than maybe some unsolicited ones) link to: [widgets.com...]

Any ideas?

[roodle]

I've heard that the link: command is very unreliable and only shows a selection of the links.

When I do the search with /index.htm or just /, it gives me the same number of backlinks.

[bobmark]

yeah, that's how it should work, roodle.

Unfortunately, the way it is working I lose all PR.

It appears to be nothing technical on my site (and MSN, Yahoo, etc. have no trouble with backlinks to domain name) and used to be fine.

[roodle]

I should have added that sometimes I get zero backlinks as well. Sometimes zero, other times x. It's very variable. I don't pay much attention to it. If you're not seeing any parallel effect on your site then I wouldn't worry about it.

[bobmark]

Unfortunately I have plummeted from top 5 SERP's and PR4-5 to PR0 for domain name so yeah, its causing problems.