Site Wide Links are still bad or doesn't matter?

[SEOold]

This has been discussed in the past many times but are site wide links still bad today? Does Google count it as one vote? What about Yahoo or MSN?

What about site wide paid text links, its the same but should they be avoided or does it not matter anymore?

I personally think they should be avoided, but many times I will get natural links from a site that can be site wide, it hasn't had any negative results. I've seen many sites that buy site wide text links and their in number 1 positions. What is everyones feeling on this?

[Pico_Train]

Yep, still bad, don't bother...One nice link on the right site is way better.

[ken_b]

You touched two separate, but related issues here.

...but many times I will get natural links from a site that can be site wide,...

"Natural" is the keyword here, if you have no control over these links, and didn't ask for for them, you are probably not as likely to be penalized, or even filtered for those links, site wide or not.

If there's any filtering done, I'd guess it's more likely against the site hosting the link.

...it hasn't had any negative results.

It's important to remember that "no negative results" is not at all the same as "no positive results".

That is, while those unsolicited natural site wide links may not be obviously hurting a site, they may very well not be helping it much, if at all.

Are site wide links bad? Think about it.

If you sold widgets, would you like to have your ad appear on every page of the number 1 widget review site?

I might well want that, if it were me.

So then the issue becomes the structure of the ad and it's link to your site.

Put a nofollow on the link and you might eliminate any real risk from a site wide link. You could also have the link appear in an iframe, so while it might appear on every page there would really only be one link.

[SEOold]

Put a nofollow on the link and you might eliminate any real risk from a site wide link. You could also have the link appear in an iframe, so while it might appear on every page there would really only be one link.

A site owner has the option of doing this. But someones who has his link up doesn't have control over this. Someone purchasing a text link also may not have this option. But I don't want to get into the topic of paid links on this post, but if you were to buy a paid link which was site wide, would you avoid this type of link?

[nomis5]

Take a look at the top, privately run gaming sites. They are all subject to site wide links from other gaming sites, it's the norm. Look at their PR position in the SERPS and it's clear to me that site wide linking has no adverse effect, for gaming sites anyway.