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I'm seeing quite a few sites with good PR on all pages except their links page. These pages had PR before, now they are either PR0, or grey ( not indexed ).
It seems it's more consistent at sites that have just one links page with multiple topics on it, sites with multiple links pages (directory style links pages) on topic seem OK.
the consitencies I see are:
Most have link text pointing to them called links
Most are called links.htm or have links in the URL.
Most are 1 page, multi-topic links pages, e.g., there is no targeted theme to the page, anything from greeting cards to health sites all on same page.
Could these be mistaken for FFA's?
I haven't checked fully, but many are listed on "link trading" sites. Maybe peple have created link farms and don't realize it?
I've seen this on many sites. It doesn't seem like a coincidence.
I have many pages greyed out.
but main page pr increaded by 1
what is 216.239.39.100?
"Don't be silly... applying PR0 to link pages would be like saying don't put any links on your sites... it would be Google trying to blow a hole in the entire concept of the world wide web"
However - given recent events and recent Google decisions, I'm saying nothing! If they were to take that path it would be the most counterproductive decision ever taken by a search engine (and jeez... we've seen plenty of those!).
If the home page has a PR 6 with a link to the links page (PR0), how can you see no correlation?
Because I also see that a lot at the moment for pages which are *not* links pages.
TJ
Also I think links.html is a good name.
It looks strongly like a poison word issue because I too have a spotless 3-link link page. I'm kicking myself because I knew for a long time that naming something "links" could blow up on me down the road.
I'm renaming this sucker and taking down the old page, the penalty is probably temporary anyway.
Whats going on?
How many of you use spacer gifs that are named "transparent.gif" and how many of you have them living within your Links Directory?
Your source code would then resemble something like this:
<img width="80" height="1" src="../../link/transparent.gif">
Completely innocent, but the words "Link" and "Transparent" being so close together in the source code is not only scary but makes me wonder if the Google algo is tripping over it.
Anybody else seeing this?
Another data point for the baffled. I'm not changing anything anyway... the page stays as it is.
Just a possibility.
Reminds me of a bar I used to frequent. Instead of naming restrooms Men and Women, it had some fancy graphics on the doors to indicate the same. After having a pitcher or so, I used to get confused about which one to use.
Looks like they're wanting to remove the (sometimes artificial) boost that link exchanges give to sites. My link pages are in a /links/ directory. Looking through my link partners, it seems like any page in a directory entitled /links/ or with a filename of links.htm and link.htm are being PR0'd. There are probably some some others...
This is similar to what Google did a while back to Zeus users by turning all pages titled "themeindex.html" into PR0, thus negating any PR boost from these link directories. (Unless the Zeus user was smart enough to rename the directory index page).
Once this shakes out, we'll need to figure out which filenames are a no-no, and rename everything accordingly. (and encourage our link partners to do the same). I've been looking at my link partner's pages, and it looks like links.htm is now being PR0'd, but links.shtml or links.asp is not. Of course, this may change once all of the datacenters are updated.
I've been looking at a very highly-ranked website which has a large links directory... his pages are not being PR0'd and his links pages have the links pages in directories in the following format "/theme-links/theme.htm" and "/anothertheme-links/anothertheme.htm", so it looks like the word "links" isn't necessarily evil, just when used in certain ways, like "links.htm" or in a directory like "/links/"?... BTW, these links pages have LOTS of outbound links.
I doubt that genuine links pages are going to be penalized.
Although I respect your opinion, please be mindful of the words you choose. There are a number of well known people here (including myself) who have already stated that they have clean link pages that are being penalized.
Are you calling us liars?
the german word "links" means "left".
why should google have any problems with directories which are named /left/ or with pages which are names left.html?
Was this meant as a political question? ;)
Are you calling us liars?
Google does not have interest in penalizing genuine link pages and any PR0's people are seeing on their links pages could be a temporary phenomenon. I have seen lots of PRs fluctuate and I believe that when things stablize links pages would do okay.
Of course, there would be some exceptions, and then some of us will have to write to Google.
BTW I think new PRs have not been calculated yet. Give it some time, say 2 weeks or so.
:-)
political content filters are an other subject.
but ..., they have the same problems: the web is international.
Links pages are, after all, a tradition older than the web itself. I remember plenty of "other BBS and FTP sites" files.
could be a temporary phenomenon
Thank you, I think that expresses your idea better.
I agree with you, this could be temporary, however I'm not seeing the usual bouncing around of the PR, which leads me to believe that this may be permanent.
I'm not seeing the usual bouncing around of the PR
I'm not seeing the "usual" of anything but that doesn't mean I can draw any conclusion on it because this is not a "usual" update.
TJ
Links pages are, after all, a tradition older than the web itself.
If really Google starts ignoring links pages, people who design their websites without the knowledge of this or the people who designed their websites much earlier and now making changes to names would be big hassle, would suffer. Does not make sense.
Imagine Google trying to penalize people for keeping HOME navigational tab because it interferes with their algorithms for finding pages with HOME (as in physical house) as the main theme.
...however I'm not seeing the usual bouncing around of the PR, which leads me to believe that this may be permanent.
A barrage of complaints, including one from me, will let them mend their ways.
It will only take me 2 hours and is not a big deal really. I just wish all my link exchange partners would do the same.
I am also enacting a new link exchange policy to only trade "resource listings" from content based pages where there are no more then 5 outbound links on that page. In otherwords, instead of going for mass numbers, like i used to, I am going after content page based high quality link exchanges. The links look more like adwords or premium ads. I've done this before and those reciprocal links have shown traffic numbers too significant to ignore.
That's what I am going to do to counteract this possible algo change. Any other suggestions?
One of them linked me from their PR6 links.html page with about 30 outgoing links (15 internal, 15 external). It still is PR6.
One of them is a high-quality directory. It had a page for describing my site and link to my site (only external one) with about 15 internal links. It used to be PR5 and now it is showing PR0.
Interesting part is that Google is just using my index page and it has moved up nicely on my main 20-30 keywords searches, generally in first 1-3 pages. Not complaining here, thus far.
The concept is just too stagerring to believe. PR0 for having a page linking to other sites? Just because you happen to call it by a logical name like 'links.htm'?
That would be just unreal, as well as highly damaging to Google itself. Maybe he will post further on here. We'll see.
My links pages do not have the word links anywhere.
My links-in pages do not have the words "links" anywhere. These pages are not linked in from any pages with the word "links" anywhere.
The word "LINKS" is not the problem!
I am taking out the word Link and links.html from every single page on my websites and replacing it words like "sites.html" and other safe words.
Don't know if it should be us who change... maybe it should be Google, but like I said, my links page is site.org/links.htm has it in the title, on the page, and it's still PR5. It can't be a blanket penalty for using those words or it would be PR0 too.
-c
