Do backlinks need to be active to be effective ?

OK, so here's my burning question.

When someone lists your url on their site, do they need to make that link active (clickable) in order for it to be worthwhile and for the SEs to pick it up as a valid backlink ?

For instance many people have posted their testimonials at http://www.articlepostrobot.com, but none of their links back to their site are active. Does this mean that these postings are not effective with respect to SE's considering them as a valid backlink ?

I am very interested in hearing opinions/thoughts/musings

Thanks

 

Yes.
Also ensure that the link does not have a "rel=nofollow" tag.

 

a link must be "clickable" in order to be a link, otherwise it is just text... it will be picked up as such, but with no benefit for you...

 

Thanks guys !

That is what I thought too. Somebody wanted to sell me a domain and told me it had several backlinks from PR5 and PR6 pages. When I checked into it further, I noticed that the links were not clickable. When I asked him, he said that the SE's didn't care about the links being clickable or not. I found this hard to believe so I passed on the domain.

 

Very good choice on that...

 

I think it must be clickable..

that is a good move that you done.

 

if a link isnt clickable then it isnt a link there for search engines wont count it

 

It wasn't a link if it wasn't clickable...Yes it should be active of course and check if that site use a nofollow attribute before linking to them though it'll help with your traffic but not with your PR if they use a nofollow attribute...