Link Request From PR5 Sites Show No Backlinks

Google PR5 w/ No Backlinks

[nativenewyorker]

I recently received a request to exchange links with another webmaster who runs 10 sites that are all ranked PR5. None of these sites show any backlinks in Google, although I know they are indexed from doing an allinurl search.

According to the Whois database, these sites have been around since the middle of 2002. At approximately 8-9 months, that seems like more than enough time for Google to find and index backlinks.

They each have links to over 100 other sites that in all likelihood link back. No backlinks showing for these 10 sites appears to be a red flag.

Should I be concerned about linking to any of these sites? If they had crosslinking penalties, why would Google still assign them PR5?

Thanks in advance,
Ted

[takagi]

Links on pages with a low PR4 or below, don't show up with a "link:www.mysite.com" search in Google. So it is possible, to have a PR5 without showing any backward links. But that is rare. You could use the same search at www.alltheweb.com to find the links known at that searcheEngine and check the PR of these pages.

If you look at the source of the page with PR5, you might see some trick with frames to hide the true URL of the page you see. If you want, you can send me a stickymail, and I will look at it.

[Marcia]

PR is by page, not site. There can be PR5 for the homepage and interior pages can still be PR0.

>>frames

It's not unusual, I've seen a number hidden in frames and sometimes it's not even evident that they're in frames without looking at the source code.

They can not only be penalized pages, some are using links pages that are robots.txt excluded from search engines (or noindex,nofollow) or have dynamic pages that won't be indexed.

One request recently was showing a 'sample' of the link they'd be putting up on a temporary page until you put yours up, with no indication where the final location of the actual link they'd be giving would be would be - plus they were requesting a link on your choice of 5 of their sites but reciprocating from a separate site they'd set up to use for their recip links.