Multiple Footer Links - from client site pages to design company?

[htdawg]

Hi,
Does anyone know for example if say a web design company puts
a footer link like "web design by widgets co." and have a link from every page of their clients websites that point back to the company's main website.

if you have a client with thousands of pages and each page links back to the web designers website would google see that as spam or just count the link from the home page and not give any value to the other links?

also a web design company could have hundreds of clients so were talking of thousands of links pointing back.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

It hasn't harmed me and I do it all the time.

[tedster]

It is a very common practice and it doesn't appear to do any harm - but it also seems to be a kind of link that Google give very little weight, probably because the theme of the linking page is usually not at all about web design.