4 replies to this topic

[Pete L]

Google weighs back links by PR, which you can find at the Google rankings site. The higher the PR, the more weight for the back link.

My question is, do Yahoo and other sites increase the weight of a back link by the position the site appears in the SO, or if they do it another way, can this be analyzed, like PR is on Google.

I am creating some online ads, placing some articles, and creating some blog sites. My intent is to find the sites that can give me the most back link bang for my buck.

Thanks,

Pete

[qwerty]

Google weighs back links by PR, which you can find at the Google rankings site. The higher the PR, the more weight for the back link.

That's not entirely accurate. The PR of the page linking to you is one of the factors taken into account, along with the number of links on that page. There are probably other factors as well.

And I don't know what factors are used by Yahoo and MSN. They both report significantly more backlinks than Google, but that doesn't really mean anything. I doubt very much that either Y or M give a page a ranking boost based strictly on the number of backlinks they're aware of. I'm sure they must take some other factors into account, such as where the links are coming from.

[Jill]

All of the engines, including Google, use anchor text as well as the general popularity of the page the link is on.

(They don't simply use PR.)

[Pete L]

I did make it sound like PR was the only measure for Google, and I know it is not. My apologies, what I meant to infer is that PR is a factor used in Google to weigh backlinks. It seems no one has a handle on Yahoo and MSN in regard to backlink weighting. I guess Google just makes it a bit easier by letting out some of what they measure by. Naturally, each SE will use a different search algorithm, but it sure helps knowing what makes a difference. That's what I love about this forum. NO one here gets treated like a mushroom. (Kept in the dark while they keep feeding you...) Sorry, old joke.

Hey Jill, by 'anchor text' I take it you mean making the link appear on the page as a keyword or key phrase, is that correct?

Pete

P.S.

Doing well on Yahoo, even crawling up on Google. MSN not on the radar yet.

[Jill]

Anchor text is the words in the clickable portion of your link.

It seems no one has a handle on Yahoo and MSN in regard to backlink weighting.

Well, currently MSN doesn't care if you have links or not. Yahoo likes links, but puts a lot of emphasis on what's on the page as well.