"Top Sites" Listings - do they hurt ranking?

[danaj]

Are you familiar with these "Top Site" listings? You add your banner ad to their site and it ranks you with other similar businesses (ie. "Top 25 Work At Home Mom Sites" or "Top 10 Dog Websites", etc).

You have to add their icon to your site and I'm just wondering if putting some "Top Site" icons on my home page will hurt my ranking? I wasn't sure because I guess you are linking to a page that may or may not have a good PR.

Thanks for any info :)

[Imaster]

Doesn't that sound like a big spammy network all interlinked to inflate PR and acquire more backlinks.

[treeline]

I think they mostly just help the site that originates them.

[jaffstar]

I know the software well. Firstly, it is not spammy, and it will not hurt your ranking.

These systems work on a voting system. You place the banner on your site, if someone clicks it, your site gets a point. The site with the most points wins!

If you notice the links, they go through a out.cgi, the site that uses it gets zero pagerank from these links.

I recommend using it.

[itraykov]

"I think they mostly just help the site that originates them."

100% right. i suggest you stay away from them

[jaffstar]

Many sites use it, and by displaying a voting banner, they get targeted leads.

Please explain why you should stay away from this?

[itraykov]

many reasons:

1. for every toplist you join you're required to add more crap to your site
2. 'targeted leads' is a strong statement. most toplists do not attract quality traffic themselves. many toplists advertise their site through popup traffic
3. toplists are designed to benefit their maker. most of the time, you'll end up sending them more traffic then they send back to you
4. they're bad way of building backlinks because they have too many outbound links on each page (and your listing is not permanent)
5. their code just looks unprofessional

there are better/more effective ways of building traffic for your site.

[berm]

Actually topsites are good for the maker and for people who join up. You will usually get more hits from them than you send in.

[itraykov]

forgot to menion that there are also easy ways of cheating to get to the top of a toplist... serious webmasters aren't making their $$ through toplists i can tell you that much