www.google.com vs Google I understand links with anchor text is great.. But most forums seem to post direct links.. are they worthless? Hope i am clear..
Pagerank.. Will it help my page rank? And will such links help my site in anyway in ranking better on search engines?
Yes, they will do both. One thing about links like www.google.com is that they are more natural. When someone decides to put a link to your site up on theirs they are much more likely to put it in that format than any other. I dont think that anchor text has that much affect, if any at all, on your PR. However it could affect your SERPs
The links without any anchor text will boost your PR and will also help your positions in the SERPs for all keywords on that page. Links with specific anchor text will have a larger impact on that specific keyword phrase and a smaller impact on the rest of the terms on the page.
I've been wondering the same thing. The New York Times website has a topics section that has listed one of my sites as a recommended resource. They listed my site as "mysitename.com". I thought the link was worthless as far as link popularity was concerned, but I guess not? I had read on one of the SEO guru's sites that it was worthless not too long ago, so I wonder.
A link like that is far from being worthless. For PR purposes it will help a lot and hopefully it will send some traffic your way.