What DOES google consider a link?

google inbound links

[designhaus]

Over the past 5 years I have had many an discussion with other webmasters over this topic. What exactly does google consider as a valid inbound link. If I think about my own personal site I have close on 100 links I know of pointing to the domain. Why then does google consider only 15 of them to be linking to me ... How are the judging what is considered to be a valid inbound link in their eyes?

[Legin]

Can anyone confirm that there's no difference between a direct link off a 468x60 gif banner and a normal text link?
I have been wondering if Google counts a 468x60 image link as a purchased banner, and so doesn't transfer pagerank so readily.

Is this completely wrong?

I don’t think anyone has clearly answered this.

A link from a banner/image give she same weight as it would a text link however a text link gives it something to associate the linked site with.

For instance a link of <a href="sausages.html">Sausages</a> is far more likely to help the rank of your site on searches for sausages.

To help compensate for this you can use an alt in your image tag to describe what you banner is saying or advertising.

I also use titles in all a tags to help describe the links. i.e. <a href="sausages.html" title="Best sausages around">Sausages</a>