Link Page Rant

[Silentcarrot]

So I was looking around the Internets trying to find partners to do a link exchange while I noticed something. Websites that don't have their link page indexed, have +2PR higher then sites that have their link pages indexed. I know why this is, google tends to see these reciprocal links as natural links, which rank higher in SEO. But isn't this a dick move though, getting reciprocal links knowing that the other person wouldn't be getting anything out of it except for maybe 1 or 2 random clicks. Or should we all be doing this for the greater good for our sites? I still say it's a dick move.

[kingcobra]

Originally Posted by Silentcarrot

So I was looking around the Internets trying to find partners to do a link exchange while I noticed something. Websites that don't have their link page indexed, have +2PR higher then sites that have their link pages indexed. I know why this is, google tends to see these reciprocal links as natural links, which rank higher in SEO. But isn't this a dick move though, getting reciprocal links knowing that the other person wouldn't be getting anything out of it except for maybe 1 or 2 random clicks. Or should we all be doing this for the greater good for our sites? I still say it's a dick move.

That`s interesting. Although I`m far from sure that you`re right here, I do have a theory about this stuff based upon what I`ve seen and it`s that indexed link pages do keep PR down, but it`s the toolbar PR and this is used as a ruse by Google to try to discourage reciprocal linking. In terms of what really counts, I`ve found them to be very helpful. We`re talking search results here, and while I think I`ll be PR1 forever, fortunately this hasn`t had any effect and my site continues to climb the SERPs in spite of this. I expect that the actual PR is a different bird altogether. The only downside is that webmasters do tend to care about this stuff and I`ve got to sell my site as the PR1 which roared and that doesn`t always work. It would be a lot better if we all ignored toolbar PR but that won`t happen anytime soon.

The bottom line is that I believe Google really likes links of all kinds but is trying to hide its love a little bit here

[traveller]

This is a very interesting thing to discover, Slentcarrot, I never look at this problem and it's pretty weird. People do put a great emphasis on PR if they sell links based on this or just want a "juicier" link exchange. From what kingcobra is saying here I think it's important for us to look at the search results we get and increase traffic continuously. I do have heavier traffic sites with lower PR that also get me a nice revenue and some of the bigger PR ones are almost useless when it comes to this ... sure thing, it would be better to have them all at PR10 and a huge traffic, but that's me dreaming out loud