Guestbook Links

Worth a light?

[JudgeJeffries]

What about guestbook links and other non relevant links, do they count for anything, will they improve PR and are there any risks?

[Macguru]

>>do they count for anything

Yup.

Keep a proper balance on things and you wont have any bad surprise.

[marcs]

A competitor has about 850 inbound links, 99% (if not all) from guestbooks. Keywords in anchor text. Currently they rank well.

I don't see this as being a healthy long-term strategy, my guess is Google will do something about this.

Short answer : it currently works and works well, use at your own risk.

[JudgeJeffries]

So used carefully maybe not such a bad thing. To alleviate risk altogether would it work if I set up a second site, vaguely relevant to my main site and signed up to every guestbook under the sun and then linked this second site to my main commercial site to poach the cumulative PR at no risk?

[annej]

I'd sign only guestbooks related to your topic. Better yet write to them and offer to exchange links.

Anne

[jomaxx]

I would strongly against using it as part of a web promotion campaign. Your time is much too valuable to waste on such a marginal activity. Signing the occasional guestbook is fine, but doing it on a large scale is boorish and parasitic, and more likely to hurt you than help you.

There have been a couple of recent threads from people wishing they could get their url's OUT of guestbooks that they have signed. It ain't easy.

[rfgdxm1]

I've only seen one example of a site that I thought was doing well mostly on guestbook links. Most guestbooks have so low a PR, and so many links, they aren't worth much.

[tigger]

I think you are better of trying to build links rather than worrying about GB's.

It may not be the case now, but at some stage Google will put some type of penalty or ignore the links from GB's, lets face it it’s got to happen considering how it’s been discussed here as a route to get better rankings and cheat the PR system

[edit_g]

I've yet to see a GB only site do well. But choice links are choice links - if you see a site which you think could benefit you - go for it. Just don't do it willy nilly.

[rfgdxm1]

Correct tigger. Since people could easily sabotage the competition by signing their URL to guestbooks, Google can't penalize. However, if Google feels that guestbook signing is causing problems with SERPs to a material degree (as opposed to, say, 1 in 100,000 sites manage to do well with just guestbooks), they should be able to filter out guestbook links. Almost all guestbooks should be easy enough to spot algorithmically, and links on them ignored.