Link Exchange

Removal of exchange links

[Sunset_Jim]

I have a large travel site that does well in the Google SERPS for highly competive serch terms but has been stuck forever with PR4. I wonder if this is due to the number of links I have exchanged with other similar themed sites. I temporarily removed all outgoing exchanged links two weeks ago and see no difference in SERPS or PR. Has any one else experienced a difference after removing exchanged outgoing links?

[Pico_Train]

The difference you'll probvably see in the next Toolbar PR update is for your PR to drop after all your link partners notice you've pulled a classic link exchange pull-out scam.

Good luck to you. Everytime I find a link exchange partner that has removed my link, what kind of words do you think come out of my mouth?

Yeah.

[Ellio]

quite simply bad practise as Google may re-cache the other sites pages while your link is missing and effect their SERPs.

Put the links back or ask for yours to be removed.

[Lorel]

The outgoing links should only affect the PR of the page they are on. Google adjusts your PR as it sees changes. It only gets reported during an update.

I wouldn't recommend linking out from the home page unless you have to as it will leak PR and that PR on the home page helps your inner pages gain pr.

[Scurramunga]

Good luck to you. Everytime I find a link exchange partner that has removed my link, what kind of words do you think come out of my mouth?

Yeah.

I removed a couple of these on the weekend after discovering that my they had shafted me.

Their loss.

[nippi]

Remvoe the links to those who have not link back, leave the ones who have.

Removing all, is stupid, most sites of any worth, have link checking software and will see the links removed, and remove links to your site.

[martinibuster]

This is the ONE and ONLY thing that matters:

I have a large travel site that does well in the Google SERPS for highly competive serch terms...

Disregard what your toolbar says about PR (it's inaccurate anyway), and most importantly don't fix what isn't broken.

[nippi]

I don't agree Martini.

I make a point when someone adds my link, then removes it, to send a spider out to crawl all sites linking to their site, get their email addresses, then email them to advise the site they were exchanging with, no longer links to them.

By the time the webmaster of the site realises "Oh #*$!, its broken" they may ahve lost half their link partners.

[Shurik]

If the site is doing well in google why would you even want to touch it. You are playing with fire

[martinibuster]

...they may ahve lost half their link partners.

The question is not about weeding out bum recips, it's about dropping recips altogether.

So I'd like to know what is more important than ranking well for competitive terms? What is the objective for monkeying around with something that is already working well to begin with?

As far as I see it, if the site is ranking well, there is nothing wrong with the picture. Aside from attaining one way inbound links, there are no improvements to be made: The site is already ranking well.

[Sunset_Jim]

I listened to all of you and restored my exchange links. I guess I was concerned about Google penalizing me for exchanging links and wanted to see if temporarily removing them would make a difference. Thanks for your comments.

[Patrick Taylor]

If Google was going to 'penalise' a page/site for reciprocal linking, it wouldn't be through a PR drop. PR is a pure calculation.

And even if the PR of a page was to drop slightly because of outgoing links, there might still be a ranking advantage - to that page - in having those on-topic outgoing links.

[soapystar]

google may well be ignoring low quality recip links anway and may well have been doing that for a long time......