Order of backlinks have importance?

[askjoe]

Does the order in which google ranks backlinks have any importance? Are the way in which they are displayed have a corrilation with the PR that google gives them? If this is so, then wouldn't it make since to go to high ranking competitors sites and link up with all of those who are linked with them in effect taking down the competiton?

[steveb]

It's random.

[CCowboy]

I have noticed on my sites backlinks with higher PR do show up first... If this means anything... well... I don't know!

[ralent]

I've seen some evidence that the higher PR backlinks, at least for some pages tend to display higher on the list. Then again it may just be coincidental.

[Herenvardo]

I've a theory. Maybe I'm wrog, but I think this is correct:
When clicking Page info/Backward links in google toolbar, we are simply doing a search like
link:http://www.domain.com/
So we will get the backward links list in SERPs as with any other query. And as everybody knows around here, PR is an important factor in the order results are shown. So, normally, you will see the backward links in PR order.
Beware! This is the PR of the links page wich is taken, not the amount of PR that is passed through the link.
For example: There is a site s with two inbound links, one from site a and the other one from site b. Site a's links page is PR 8 (it is too much, but is to be ilustrative) and there are ten thousand links
Site b's links page is only PR 4, but it has only half a dozen links. When looking for backward links to s, the link from a will appear first, 'cos it has more PR. But the link from b is currently passing much more PR to s.

[steveb]

It's random.

Still.

[doc_z]

If there would be a randomly order, the probability of showing a high or a low PR backlink would be the same. ('High' and 'low' PR backlinks mean that you are dividing all backlinks which are shown by Google into two halves of equal number, where all pages of one halve have higher PR than the pages of the other halve). If you are examining the results, you'll find that the probability of finding high PR backlinks at the beginning of the results is higher than finding low PR backlinks (as already mentioned by CCowboy and ralent). Therefore, the order isn't random.

In Einstein's words: Google würfelt nicht.

Also, if the order would be random, the order of the backlinks would change completly (randomly) after each update. This is not the case.

Just because the order isn't obvious doesn't mean it's random. Herenvardo gave a possible explanation, but one can also think of other explanations.

By the way, since it is a deterministic process, the order would be at most pseudo-random.

[BigDave]

I think that it is in the order that they are found in the database. It might appear to be in something close to PR order, but that would only be because they pages that go into the DB sooner are *somewhat* more likely to be of a higher PR than those that go in later.

They would also appear in a similar order each month (or at least they would have before the change in crawling) because only a small percentage of the links on the web are changed each month, so pages are crawlled in a similar order.

Don't read anything into the data that isn't there. Google is not going to be doing any extra processing that they don't have to on something like the link: command. It is still useful, but not *that* useful.

[sit2510]

>>> I think that it is in the order that they are found in the database.

I agree with BigDave and often think of it as fragmented clusters where Googlebot crawls the other links to access that site per cycle...and the order does *not* appear to be random.

Anyone with many domains in his or her own network can easily test about this - Create 5 brand new websites and add these 5 links on the same page of PR4 or PR5 at the other websites let say 20. The order of backlinks shown for these 5 websites would all be in the same order - so it is quite obvious that there are certain factors that determine this same order and backlinks are not randomly displayed.

I also find that it is not a rule of thumb for the linked pages with higher PR to outrank those of lower ones. The one with PR4 can be No. 1 while PR5 very close to the last.

[Marval]

sit2510- the problem with running that test right now is I don't think anyone has posted here that they can see new links counted in their backlinks, so it would be tough to verify...I can see PR4 sites in my links at the front of the list, and PR6 sites on the 12th page of links, and plenty of my own internal links in between ranging from PR2-PR5. The only thing I am sure of is that the links changed drastically some months ago and have never recovered, to the tune of a 50% drop in links reported by Google, and no "spammy" type backlinks.

[sit2510]

>>> the problem with running that test right now is I don't think anyone has posted here that they can see new links counted in their backlinks, so it would be tough to verify...

Marval,

Actually the problem is not that tough as the person has to wait for 1 or 2 months to see the result of backlinks by him or herself - please do not undergo an expectation that Google will report the backlinks (& PR) as a rolling update as its index, but it would be much longer; the tendency signals that the timeframe could be like pre-dominic time - once in a month or in two months. The scenario that I describe about the test is what I had done that before with our new sites.

Also new links had already been added as Google backlinks in June, so it might not be too long from now if Google has not done that for July.