Will the Real Link Request Stand Up?

This is a great blog post over at Jim Boykin's blog about link exchange emails.

[Emil]

I wonder how important it is not to have "links" in the url. Idon't have it and don't like to trade links with those who have it, unfortunately they are so many it is difficult to avoid. Especially if one has a new site. And when one sees a link page with "links" in the url with a nice page rank one it might be beneficial anyway, won't it?

It might be; it might not be. Depends on which search engine you're talking about too.

One thing to consider when getting links is what kind of long-term investment are you making?

Google might be discounting links from "links" pages, and Yahoo and MSN might or might not be right now, but what do you think is going to happen to those pages a year from now? Two years from now?

I'm not asking those questions because I know the answers; I'm asking those questions because those are the things you need to be thinking about as you're getting link partners.

Like anything else, it's not a blanket rule, either. I would imagine if a very high authority site had a "links" page, Google would still count the link anyway. A lot of it is going to have to do with the site's trust level too.