Are my outgoing / incoing links balance being a problem?

Too much outgoing links bad?

[silverbytes]

My site has some incoming links and a directory with links to other sites, pass months exchanged links and put on my directory links to some 70 sites, some of these about half didn't link back and my pr is now lower than before.

Is a balance problem? my outgoing links (that I'm deleting now) could hurt my pr?

[Matt Probert]

I've not heard of outbound links as being viewed negatively by Google. I have however heard, from Google, that it doesn't respect "link farms". Try to keep your links relevant and within the content, in this way outbound links are liked by Google.

Matt

[silverbytes]

They are relevant, and my pages are over 20 links, I was talking about having many outbound links may damage your appreciation by SE, since you are linking ot many sites and having not equal incoming links...

[Dugger]

I have noticed that it does make a difference since the Florida update. When I compared the sites that survived Florida I found that more often than not they all had something in common - they had more incoming links than outgoing links. They accomplished this by having links pages that were not indexable or were not included in Google or they were hosted off-site.

As a test, I had a client change their links page so the links were in script instead of html and miraculously they rose to page 1 of the results.

I think there is a "balance" of incoming to outgoing links that Google looks at. I have a site that ranks very well and has many incoming and outgoing links. I make sure almost all of the outgoing links are reciprocated - that the links pages are listed in Google. When my rankings fall I check for links that are no longer reciprocating and remove them. My rankings then rise again next update.

So, I for one believe that not having the proper ratio of incoming to outgoing links is a problem in Google and recommend that everyone should check to make sure that their link partners' links pages are actually listed in Google and that the links are indexable.

[silverbytes]

I think the same

[cabowabo]

Outbound links siphon PR from your site. Having a lower PR but no decrease in the amount of backlinks means that your link reputation has been diminished. Look carefully at who you link to.

Cheers,

CaboWabo

[grandpa]

Outbound links siphon PR from your site

What?!? PR has nothing to do with a site. It is relevant to a particular page in question.

I haven't noticed a drop in PR on a single page where I have ONLY outbound links.

[Dugger]

I agree Grandpa.

As well, I never consider PR when exchanging links. I just check to make sure Google has cached the page and then check the page source as well to see if the links are indexable. Also, I have seen lots of links pages that show PR on the toolbar but are not actually in Google's index.

[RobBroekhuis]

Seems just plain silly to penalize outgoing links (beyond the minor PR drain) - isn't there a benefit to having links to "authority sites"? My site has few incoming links - but a large number of my visitors bookmark my site. If on my info pages I can link to an external page that has more info or better pictures, then I do so, for the benefit of my visitors. That's all the more useful a service with the proliferation of meaningless and cookie-cutter pages in the search results, which makes it time-consuming to find the good stuff. It would be silly for me to expect a reciprocal link. Ah - it's all a moot point - G no longer indexes my info pages anyway (why oh why?)
Rob

[cbpayne]

DMOZ has 4.5 million outgoing links - does not seem to be a problem for them

[MHes]

I have a directory in a competitive area with few links in but thousands out.... it performs amazingly well (i mean seriously well :). We once tried making all the links go through a cgi/database to stop the spider following them and it had no effect on rankings

The pr loss is insignificant to other internal pages or pr flow around the site. I think google treats internal pr flow in a very different way to external pr flow.

Updating your pages probably has more effect than the actual changes themselves.

Think about the profile of a seriously good site, after all, that is what google is looking for. There will be natural non recipricol links to help the user, links in that are not recipricated, and recipricated links between complimentary sites that make perfect sense.

The more 'natural' you make your site, the more likely it will fit into the pre determined profile of the type of quality site Google is looking for.

[Marval]

MHes - thats exactly my experience as well - and the Florida update had no effect whatsoever on my pages of outgoing links.

Also have never seen a page "lose or drain" PR due to outgoing links so someone will have to prove (with evidence) that that occured on their pages - its just not part of the equation and never has been.

[Dugger]

Keep in mind that Florida only applies to certain keywords. It is not index wide. So, your directories may not be being judged by the same rules as I was mentioning earlier. The fact that your site as not affected by Florida indicates that to be the case.

[The Contractor]

As a test, I had a client change their links page so the links were in script instead of html and miraculously they rose to page 1 of the results.

uhmm... was the page called "links.htm" or similar... I may consider that having to do with something also.

[Dugger]

No, just called "default" but the links page was in a directory called "favoritelinks".