Are "links" and "resources" pages really discounted?

or is it all about number of links on them?

[Makaveli2007]

In my niche there are some nice sites who have pages like that, that do not contain a ton of wack links. Actually, every big site in my niche (mostly university sites) have such a links/resources/etc. page on their site.

I know people say links on such pages dont c ount much, they're discounted, etc., but is that really the case?

The link authority (formerly known as PR) that gets passed on from one page is divided by the number of links on it (though it might be a bit more complicated if they take location on the page into consideration, too).

In other words if you have a wack links or resources page with 100's of links, its not gonna count much, anyway...however if its a high authority site and the webmaster selected the links carefully (about 10 only), is a link from such a page really discoutned big time as many suggest?

Or is there no real evidence for such a thing as discounting links from pages on which it says "links", "resources", etc.? (just like nobody can tell whether .edu links simply help more because theyre usually high authority sites...and people just start speculating that its all about the .edu)

[ogletree]

Any link from a .edu site is a good thing. Links are always good. The only time you really consider how many links are on a page is if somebody is giving you a choice to be on a page with less or if your paying for it. Otherwise just get the link.

[Makaveli2007]

I cant agree with thato ne. If you want to optimize your ROI at the end of the day, it's an extremely good idea to be able to assess the value of a link...so you know whether putting in some work to get it or not is justified (if the ROI is too low chances are it's not worth making an effort if that effort consists of more than "submit a link").

If there's 1 link on a page or 19 links on the page..and then your link is added the difference in the value of the link is 10-fold. In other cases it might be 100-fold...that'll make me think twice whether Im going to put in some work to get that link or not (if its not a "submit your site" link).

I think getting links is all about ressource allocation.