I got this e-mail back today

[bookdjs]

"Hi there i got your email about a link exchange with widgets.co.uk

To link to you and would be bad for our search engine ranking."

Does linking to sites with a lower PR than yourself make a difference to your search engine ranking?

I am of the school of thought that links from similar sites are a good thing no matter what their PR. Who is right, me or Mr Widgets.co.uk?

[artdog]

Maybe it wasn't PR but some thing else they didn't like about your site. I usually only accept about 1 in 20 requests because the requestors site was not a good link for reasons other than PR.

[bookdjs]

I am not worried about why he didn't link to me. But I would like to know if what he said was true.

[lufc1955]

Don't just link to a site because of PR. It's all about quality and relevance. The PR shown on the Google toolbar may not be accurate and also a site that at the moment is a PR2 may well be a PR6 in 12 months time! Links become more relevant the older they are so you should build links for long term benefits.

[Swebbie]

Linking to a site can really only hurt you if it's a link farm or some other "bad neighborhood" page. At least in terms of search engines. Who knows if bad links make you look bad to your actual visitors, but I would guess if you're recommending crappy sites on your links page, it can't help but make a bad impression on visitors.

I've found that, once a newer site gets some PR, people are much more open to posting links. Many webmasters shy away from trading links with a PR0 site for fear that they've somehow been penalized by Google. Personally, I don't care about PR as long as the page my link will be posted to has been cached by Google within the last month or so. That means the spider will pick up the link to my site, probably pretty quickly.

Remember: the PR that shows in the little green bar is not necessarily the PR that Google recognizes. I stopped putting stock in anything beyond the quality of the sites I offer a link trade with and whether or not the page my link will be posted to has been spidered by Google.