Do Google Consider Footer links differently ?

Hi ..

It's all in the title ..
Do Footer links carry less weight than intext links ?

Any thoughts will be welcomed.
Thanks.

 

Yes actually they do.
I remember reading a while ago that link placement within page is a part of google's algorithm.
Why would a tiny link hidden on the corner of a site have the same value as one in the middle of a page within good content?

 

Yes they do. In context links pass the most link juice.

 

Typically links that appear higher on the page are more valued than ones near the bottom. Still, they all hold value, so take them where you can get them!

 

Yes, but a carefully designed css can help. You can have your footer content come down near the top of the page and position the footer content block where it should be, at the bottom. Check your page with a text only browser like Lynx viewer. It shows you what a crawler sees and in what sequence.

 

Typically, I think that content links are valued higher, then sidebar links, then footer links. Especially if the site is css optimized with the content at the top of the page with css ordering

 

Thanks everyone for answering ..
Rep+

 

Links near the very top, if they are clearly defined as navigational links, also have more weight.

 

The juicy links are in text not footers.

 

Both yes and no for footer links. They have been devalued due to abused but still have somewhat powerful in some meaning. If the website itself has some authority from Google perspective then the type of outbound link would be much less effect for their scores. It is depends on many other factors involved and cannot be judged based on type of link as "footer" anyway.

 

Right, contextual links would be more natural and thus be loved by Google and other search engines.

all the best,

 

The higher/more embedded the links, the more importance they will be given. You could try and manipulate that by using header/bold tags though.

 

thanks for that very helpful input!! Never thought of using a text only browser before, now I'm curious

 

Normally, they don't. But in some cases the do ignore the link.

 

Yes,footerl links carry less weight than intext links as context links are more natural than intext links.

 

I think any links which are on a single page, be it footer links or blogroll links or content links, all the links have equal value as per the importance of that particular page in google's eyes. So if there are 100 links on that particular page including the footer or blogroll or content, all links will have an equal value and they will get diluted. The only thing you can do is try to find such an article which has less outgouing links

 

The first link in the page, the better link

 

For the purpose of calculating PR, that is true. But it is only true for PR.

Other factors are of course 'anchor text' and 'surrounding text' relative to the topic. Position on the page is generally considered to be important these days, because of what was a widespread practice of selling footer links and the fact that G ultimately killed the practice.

Bottom line: all links are not created equal

 

If the link is in the same domain , then they do .. Other than that , they don't .