Adding a signature may affect your PR

[J.D.]

It seems that adding a signature may adversly affect your PR. According to Google's patent application,

A typical, "legitimate" document attracts back links slowly. A large spike in the quantity of back links may [...] signal attempts to spam a search engine [...]. Examples of documents that give links without editorial discretion include guest books, referrer logs, and "free for all" pages that let anyone add a link to a document.I added a link to my signature and a month later the PR5 page that the signature was pointing to was dropped from the index.

J.D.

[T0PS3O]

Yes... But... That brings us back to the ability to take out a competitor.

I'm 100% convinced sig links are useless for ranking, but they don't hurt either. Because if they do, I'll point them to that bastard competitor and laugh my way to the bank.

Google does make some silly mistakes but I think they have it right on this one.

[AfterHim.com]

JD,

Can you post the original page that was posted on by google?

Thanks,

brandon

[J.D.]

Can you post the original page that was posted on by google?I'd rather not create more links now until I figure out what's going on. The timeline was like this. Two days ago I was enjoing the middle of the first page for my primary keywords. Yesterday I found that the page simply disappeared from the index - not to be found anywhere, even if searched directly by the URL. At the same time I found multiple DP links - my signatures. My other pages (same website) seem to be still there - lingering back pages. Can't say if it affected them too as I wasn't monitoring them too closely.

TOPS, I hear you - it's a good point. I'm not sure how Google deals with this. They do check, though, things like domain registration details, how authoritative and trustworty referring pages really are, etc. They probably can figure out such attempts and punish attacker, which would be a good deterrent for such actions.

J.D.

[T0PS3O]

My DP Latest Blog entries always outrank my actual blog entry, which is pretty annoying but I really doubt the links you put up were the cause of your disappearance. But then again, Google can be inconsistent at times. A lot!

[tntcheats]

I don't think it's really going to affect you terribly much with your signature.
Hell, the concept sort of also says that your PR can be negatively effected by getting a site-wide link on a large website.

[stuw]

This is my guess...

A large number of links added quickly, in a spike may be ignored. Any number of links added at a reasonably consistant rate are ok.

If you were to be penalised for adding too many links in one go then, it would be a weapon for use against competitors.

[J.D.]

This is my guess...

A large number of links added quickly, in a spike may be ignored.Not according to Google's patent application. Spikes are not good.

Any number of links added at a reasonably consistant rate are ok.That is true - a steady growth rate is what they consider as a positive indicator.

J.D.

[Willy]

Forum posting has a fairly "steady growth rate", don't ya think :D Seriously, though, if you really could get penalized for linking to your sites in your forum signatures, wouldn't lots of DP members be going hungry... ;)

Maybe a good idea to e-mail Google to ask why your site was dropped?

[J.D.]

Forum posting has a fairly "steady growth rate", don't ya think :D I was acquiring links slowly and about 100 new links in the last month did make a difference for me.

Seriously, though, if you really could get penalized for linking to your sites in your forum signatures, wouldn't lots of DP members be going hungry... ;)How do you know that some aren't? Think about it this way - Google, at least theoretically, is after quality of search. If I make a reference (and quote a link) in my post to some page that relates to the post, this link is useful and may be considered as a vote for the referred site. Signatures, on the other hand, do not relate to posts - they are useless and generally will be considered as such. Hopefully, Google can tell signatures from the content and they will simply ignore these links. I'm going to play it safe, though, and think that they can't.

Maybe a good idea to e-mail Google to ask why your site was dropped?I'd imagine there's a ton of questions like this dangling in their mailbox and they will probably just ignore it.

I'm not trying to convince anybody - just sharing my experience. Honestly, I will be glad if I'm wrong on this. I guess I'm gonna have to wait and see what happens...

J.D.

[Sloth]

Meh, can't picture google doing that. BUt if they do, no probs, I'll just add everyone above me on the SERPS to my signature ;)

[yfs1]

I don't tend to follow this either. I have a lot of sites in various major SEO and ECommerce forums and have never had a problem. I added Article Depot when it was first released to my sig in three of them (around 10,000 total posts) and it had 20,000 pages indexed in around two weeks.

I have of course aquired a lot more links to sustain that but I have never seen an issue with dropped pages or PR.

That being said, I don't think it does a whole lot for you in the SERPs but I have certainly never seen it hurt.

[zman]

As has been said before, if this were the case you would see many people start linking to competitors.

[Jade456]

Some already have, or they intentionally create a bad neighborhood and link them to their competitors. Good thing it doesn't work, otherwise se results would be a lot worse!

[zman]

Hi jade, nice to see another Nevadan. :)

[frankm]

for a while I had a signature here with "RRR" as caption, don't ask me why, I did.

searching for RRR at google.com put my site at #9 for a while.

[I never used RRR elsewhere]

[mightyb]

As far as losing your good keyword position, it happens to me all the time. Im there one week, the next week im nowhere to be seen. Signatures work a treat for me. Infact i got to PR4 on my old site (sold now) and had 1st position for a number of mobile phone related keywords by doing nothing but posting on various forums with my signature.