105 replies to this topic

[compar]

Nope.  It's got nothing at all to do with reciprocal links.  This is a big misconception that people have for some reason.

The search engines don't care if someone reciprocates your link.  And in fact, as others have stated this may even be less value if they do.

What you want is links pointing to your site.  Not reciprocal links.  (They are fine, but that's not what the engines are looking for.)

Jill

As the semantic moderator of this forum let me take issue with this statement of Jill's.

While I agree that it is not the fact that a link is reciprocal that is of value. In fact many links are reciprocal. And to a point made by QWERTY, utopia is that your page is soooo important and sooooo valuable that the world will beat a link path to your door. But the majority of us mere mortals end up offering a reciprocal link for most of the incoming links.

Now there is all kinds of mathematics involved with the value placed on incoming links and the value your site "gives away" when you place an out going link, but the truth of life is that a high percentage, I would even hazard to say a very high percentage, of links on the Internet are reciprocal links.

So I don't think Talking Bear was specifically referring to "reciprocal links" as apposed to non reciprocal links. I think he was only talking about links in general because frankly most of us think of them in terms of reciprocal links because the vast majority are.

[lots0]

...but the truth of life is that a high percentage, I would even hazard to say a very high percentage, of links on the Internet are reciprocal links.

Does your definition of “reciprocal links” include all links including links that are internal (internal = within the same domain) or are you only counting links between different domains?

I think he was only talking about links in general because frankly most of us think of them in terms of reciprocal links because the vast majority are.

Well I would not presume to guess what Talking Bear was thinking, I believe his written question was plain enough.

I'm trying to understand the impact and value of reciprical links.

Reciprocal linking is IMO vastly over rated by people that have difficulty understanding how Google’s algo works.

As I said before, reciprocal linking is an arrangement between two Webmasters. Reciprocal linking is not an unbiased vote or recommendation for another website. As reciprocal linking is a very easy way to manipulate the SERP, reciprocal linking is weighted accordingly by google.

[Mike Grehan]

There is no evidence that I have ever seen that even slightly points to link relevance or text surrounding a link being a factor in ranking. Now if someone has some evidence that link relevance or text surrounding a link make a difference in the SERP, I would love to take a look at it.

Hey guys,

Just passing through, as ever, and noticed this one. So, as I've heard this many times before (and as I have two authorities explaining why this is important in the next edition of my book) I thought, for the moment, I'd just quote Larry Page and Sergey Brin:

"Google is designed to provide higher quality search so as the Web continues to grow rapidly, information can be found easily. In order to accomplish this Google makes heavy use of hypertextual information consisting of link structure and link (anchor) text. Google also uses proximity and font information. As for link text, we are experimenting with using text surrounding links in addition to the link text itself."

I hope that helps to resolve a little mystery and believe me, you'll be quite surprised at some of the other clues which linkage data and the text surrounding links can give to a search engine. We're beginning to write in a different genre in HTML for the web and it's absolutely fascinating.

Take latent semantic indexing for instance... zzzzzzzzzzzzz... here's a field where... zzzzzzzzzz... no, no listen... zzzzzzzzzzz

[lots0]

Google also uses proximity and font information.

I think before this quote settles anything, Mr. Brin or Mr. Page, whichever one actually made this statement, would have to define what "proximity" is.

[compar]

Does your definition of “reciprocal links” include all links including links that are internal (internal = within the same domain) or are you only counting links between different domains?

No! A reciprocal link is a link to and from an outside web site. Not an Internal link.

I know Google reports internal links as backlinks, but I can never quiet understand why. That seems to me to be simply good navigation.

Well I would not presume to guess what Talking Bear was thinking, I believe his written question was plain enough.

Well we will have to let Talking Bear determine that. I personally have used the term reciprocal links when I was only referring to links. So I was suggesting that he might have also. But I certainly am prepared to be corrected by Talking Bear.

[compar]

I think before this quote settles anything, Mr. Brin or Mr. Page, whichever one actually made this statement, would have to define what "proximity" is.

Oh Goody! Another semantic debate. What do you think "proximity" can mean?

[Mike Grehan]

I think before this quote settles anything, Mr. Brin or Mr. Page, whichever one actually made this statement, would have to define what "proximity" is.

I doubt whether "Mr Brin or Mr Page" need to "define" anything to you personally. And as for as the meaning of proximity - check the dictionary it means:

"Nearness in space"

But there again, I thought this was about the use of link anchor text and that which surrounds it. Not an appraisal of the use of English language. It seems fairly apparent to me what they mean.

Edited by Jill, 25 September 2003 - 01:33 AM.

[Alan Perkins]

Hi Mike

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

Aside from PageRank and the use of anchor text, Google has several other features. First, it has location information for all hits and so it makes extensive use of proximity in search. Second, Google keeps track of some visual presentation details such as font size of words. Words in a larger or bolder font are weighted higher than other words

...

For every matched set of hits, a proximity is computed. The proximity is based on how far apart the hits are in the document (or anchor) but is classified into 10 different value "bins" ranging from a phrase match to "not even close". Counts are computed not only for every type of hit but for every type and proximity. Every type and proximity pair has a type-prox-weight. The counts are converted into count-weights and we take the dot product of the count-weights and the type-prox-weights to compute an IR score.

[lots0]

I doubt whether "Mr Brin or Mr Page" need to "define" anything to you personally.

I didn’t ask them too

I don’t think anyone here disputes the meaning of the word “proximity”, I guess I should have phrased my statement a little different. I should have asked; Proximity to what? You Mr. Grehan seem to suggest they it was inferred proximity to a hypertext link, I think it just may infer proximity to the top of the page or proximity to the beginning of a paragraph or sentence.

[Alan Perkins]

The key sentence was not the "proximity" one, which is well established, but this one:

As for link text, we are experimenting with using text surrounding links in addition to the link text itself.

[lots0]

Hello Alan
I agree that the stanford papers talk about it, but I just have not seen any evidence in the SERP to back up the statement that proximity to a hypertext link makes any difference. If you have any eveidence, I would love to take a look at it.

[Alan Perkins]

I'll just edit Mike's post to remove the "proximity" word and make the important bit clearer:

Just passing through, as ever, and noticed this one. So, as I've heard this many times before (and as I have two authorities explaining why this is important in the next edition of my book) I thought, for the moment, I'd just quote Larry Page and Sergey Brin:

"As for link text, we are experimenting with using text surrounding links in addition to the link text itself."

I hope that helps to resolve a little mystery and believe me, you'll be quite surprised at some of the other clues which linkage data and the text surrounding links can give to a search engine. We're beginning to write in a different genre in HTML for the web and it's absolutely fascinating.

Experimenting means just that - it may not be live yet, and it may never be live...

[Talking Bear]

Hi Everyone, Talking Bear here....

I think everyone has been gracious enough to answer my original question.

When I refer to reciprical links, I mean external Links. Based on everyones reply it appears as though there isn't much value given to reciprical links in relation to Page Rank.

I may agree with that, but let me provide some additional information. I have been modifying my site quite often lately. As a standard practice I update a "Last Modified Date" at the bottom of my site. When I modify a page I then change the "Last Modified Date" to the current date, and then submit my home page to Google's add url page.

What I have noticed lately is that a number of my pages are re-indexed within 3 to 4 days after submission. Generally I check the keywords assoiciated with the modified page. When I do a search on google, I see a update date associated with my listing. I also see that same date on other site listings for that same keyword.

To clarify, If I'm in the 5th position for a search term on google I see the same update date for other web site listings for that term on that page.

Is it possible that my site is getting re-indexed many more times due to google following my links to another web site or from other web sites to mine if there is a reciprical relationship?

If this is the case then the benefit of reciprical links within the same site theme would be more frequent re-indexing.

Just a theory....

[lots0]

Alan wrote,

Experimenting means just that - it may not be live yet, and it may never be live...

I can agree with this statement Alan.

But I think some people are reading a lot more into statements like this

Counts are computed not only for every type of hit but for every type and proximity.

than the author(s) intended. Most of these statements, as you know, are intentionally vague so as not to give away the actual algo.

So I stand by my first statement on this

There is no evidence that I have ever seen that even slightly points to link relevance or text surrounding a link being a factor in ranking.

Now if someone has some evidence that link relevance or text surrounding a link make a difference in the SERP, I would love to take a look at it.

I also see that a lot of folks here have different definitions of reciprocal linking. When I talk about reciprocal linking I mean a link from page A to page B and a link from page B to page A, thus creating a linking loop between two pages, it does not matter what domain page A or page B resides on. As I said this is my definition, I don’t expect anyone to agree with it.

Talking Bear wrote,

What I have noticed lately is that a number of my pages are re-indexed within 3 to 4 days after submission.

I don’t believe that your re-submitting the updated pages makes any difference at all. I think it is much more likely that googlebot has determined that your page is frequently updated and worth re-indexing on a regular bases.

Talking Bear wrote,

If this is the case then the benefit of reciprical links within the same site theme would be more frequent re-indexing.

For this statement to be true, you would have to show that themeing or clustering is being used by google. As I said above, your page is most likely being regularly re-indexed because you update the page content on a regular bases.

[Jill]

Wow, I pretty much agree with all you said in that last post, Lots0!

Except, I do think of reciprocal links as a link from say a links page, that links to say someone else's home page, and then the second page does the same...links from their links page to the other guys home page.

But other than that, I agree with all the rest.



Jill