Links from Others Message Board Pages

Huge number of links from one site. Good or Bad?

[Frank_Rizzo]

Looking at WMT I see that a couple of sites have a disproportionate amount of links pointing at my home page. These links are on message board side panel links, and blog side panel links. Thus for a large message board there are thousands of links.

mysite: widgets
competitor site: widgetworld
competitor site: widgetblogs

WMT Links to your site:
widgetworld 20,370
widgetblogs 732
facebook 32
wikipedia 11
widgetlistings 7
rivalwidgets 5
internationalwidgets 4

widgetworld have 20,370 links pointing at my home page. Whilst they are a rival site I believe they are bona fide and are just listing us in their useful links side panel on every one of their message board pages (20K +)

Is this a problem which is causing some kind of penalty?

[jimbeetle]

No, it shouldn't, but it probably doesn't boost anything either. They're most likely devalued along with the umpty-ump number of links in blog rolls and such.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm with Jim on this, can't hurt but likely is of extremely little help. The fact that the site linked to you probably helps rankings but Google recognizes forum software, as they do blog comment sections, and likely avoid passing much link value from these locations. Under the circumstances you describe I think you're getting the benefit of being linked from that domain only.

Does site A receive a link from related site B? yes, assign x value. Additional links do not mean "yes x 20,000".

Don't worry about Google and enjoy the traffic 20,000 links sends you, that's what building sites is about.

[Frank_Rizzo]

That's ok then. I had assumed it looked like link overload or something.

Despite being listed on 20,000 pages, from that site I only receive around only a dozen visitors a month.