I've read where a few people asked is they are indeed Backlinks to your site in your posts on forums if have your own Website link in your signature... I am also curious about this... I belong to alot of Video Gaming Forums, Tech Forums, etc. and have my Site link in my SIG and have well over 16,000 post/replies on the forums doing Tech Support and answering Video Game related questions, I have belonged to these for a few years... When looking at Google & Yahoo for my backlinks I see very few from my SIGS and my total of all my links is not even near 4,000... Is there just a certain number of those links that make it to The search engines or are they ignored because it is the *Same Forum Site & the Same Sig Link?*... Or do they *Expire After Awhile?*... Thanks guys...
I would think it is because not every thread is getting indexed from all those forums. 16,000 posts doesn't necisarily mean 16,000 indexed backlinks, you know what I mean.
I think the links on sigs that will be listed as backlinks are the ones that will are on threads that have been around a few months or even more. I noticed this when some thread pages have a PR3 or PR4. If your post is on those pages then consider yourself fortunate IMO.
Not every forum page would be indexed in the search engines, thats why you would have the discrepencies. Disregard forum links anyway, they dont do much more then index sites.