Advice on Using Different Kind of Outbound Link

Links with question mark symbol; good or bad?

[enaitee]

As recommended here many times I am trying to reduce my
reliance on Google by placing links in specialty url lists as well as on other individual sites.
One of these specialty lists or "ring" requires a type of link on my home page that is in effect a control to look at the list's previous url or the next one. The html code has question marks included and I'm sure some past post here has advised against it or had a special handling for it. Can anyone clarify Google's view of such links? I wouldn't want to have an attempt to supplement Google hits in fact cause me to lose ground. I tried searching but can't remember what the type of html code is called; cgi? php?

[jdMorgan]

enaitee,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

I've had sites with those Webring links on them, and it's not a problem.

The question mark indicates the end of the URL and the beginning of a query string - an argument or series of arguments to be passed to a script at that URL.

Jim

[Marcia]

enaitee, are you also wondering whether those links will affect the PR distributed to the rest of the site from the homepage?

>>One of these specialty lists or "ring"

Some rings are OK and some lists are OK. But some lists are nothing more than FFA's and link farm schemes. Some are good sites and some are bad neighborhoods. Aside from the question mark issue, I think you also have to look at the value and quality of the site you're linking to, and how much they'll benefit you with sending you qualified traffic.

[enaitee]

Hi...
jdMorgan: Yes, that's the kind I'm looking at. It's good to
know you haven't had any problem using them. Other than
needing confirmation about how Google sees them all the
other aspects of the ring look good. Thanks!

Marcia: I have looked hard at the other sites in this ring
and they are defititely are of a caliber that I'd like mine
associated with. I know the tool bar PR is ailing of late
but Google gives the ring a 5 which is two above my rating.
I am attracted to this type of link source because of the
prequalification of visitors to the ring site. To draw the
same qualified visitors using search terms on Google would
be well neigh impossible because of the competition for
those same search terms. In an odd way this current Google
uncertainty has been beneficial becuase it forced me to
at last do some real work finding alternative sources of
visitors. I'm finding some odd things like some very
popular sites with gobs of back links who use the Zeus
back link generator and are happily holding down high
page rank placement with very high Overture average clicks.
One back link from one of these sites has already made up
for my loss of visitors due to Google's changes. Thanks for
your input.

[coolasafanman]

I reread several old threads here and i still get extremely confused about what's considered a link farm. Basically, i'm building a directory site where I require a linkback from people submitting sites. In addition, the linkback is to the top of their general category. So if their site is in stuff>widgets>blue widgets i require a linkback to 'widgets.' The idea is that it's human edited and i screen the sites that submit. the deep links mean that they're actually meaningful links - if a surfer wants to see more widgets sites, he'll have an easier time by going directly to the main category. I also give people a free advertisement - so basically they get 2 links from my site, in HTML in exchange for their reciprocal link to the category, under the condition that I have to accept their site to be listed.

Is this legit, or could it be construed as a link farm? if a link farm, what must I do differently?