Linking to Google - Will You Be Penalized?

[inuwolf]

I understand Google penalizes sites for extensive offsite linking, especially when it is reciprocal, but I have always instintively doubted that Google penalizes sites for linking to Google. Is this true? I ask because a site of mine is heavily Google-integrated; its main page features a big list of links to Google searches that could be interpreted as heavy offsite linking.

If it is true that Google doesn't penalize sites for extensively linking to it, does Google offer amnesty to links to any other sites? (I'm thinking of noncommerical authority websites like w3.org)

And a final question founded in curiosity: if linking to Google is OK, couldn't a person make a link farm without the usual penalties of offsite linking by linking to Google caches of its insidious affiliates? Has this been done before?

[tedster]

Google penalizes sites for extensive offsite linking, especially when it is reciprocal

I'm not sure where you heard this, but in my experience it is not true. Reciprocal links may be devalued a bit compared to a beautiful inline citation from a totally independent domain. But in themselves I have not seen recip links bring a penalty.

And offsite, non-reciprocal linking bringing a penalty makes no sense to me. Off site links are the heart of the Page Rank algorithm.

Or have I musunderstood you in some way?

[inuwolf]

Sorry, I accidentally posted the thread in this forum but I guess it is not entirely irrelevant.

I was under the impression Google penalized sites, like link farms, for heavy offsite linking. I've read several threads about it here at WW, how links farms are a way of the past and content-based, relatively self-contained sites are the way to go. The rest of my post is based on that assumption; have I assumed wrongly? When I say "penalized" I don't mean banned, I just mean a site's PR is negatively affected.

[tedster]

In my experience, the links are just devalued or ignored. So if there's little else on the site, then there's nothing left to rank. It's not a negative, it's the absence of a positive (or the lessening of a positive). But for sites that were flying high merely on reciprocals before this devaluation occurred, it sure felt like a penalty.

Anyone see otherwise? A site that was doing well, then put in a bunch of recips and immediately dropped?

[inuwolf]

But for sites that were flying high merely on reciprocals before this devaluation occurred, it sure felt like a penalty.

Interesting. That's probably where I got that impression. (Never suffered it myself, but I heard quite a bit about it.)

Thanks for clearing that up.