Can links in your forum signatures do anything BAD for your website's PageRank, etc?

I just need to know:
Can links in your forum signatures do anything BAD with your website's rankings and Google PageRank in search engines?

The reason I ask this is because I never see any high PR sites in people's signatures. I want to do this with one of my higher PR sites, but am afraid if I do it would affect the Google PageRank of the site in some way...if it could.

Can having links to your sites in forum signatures potentially do any harm to your website's rankings, traffic, or PageRank determination?

Awaiting your reply.
Thanks.

 

I would guess that if people want to promote a site through signatures, it probably hasn't been indexed or ranked by Google yet. That would explain why you find low ranked pagers in signatures. I don't think there is a negative causal relationship.

 

Everybody !!! Stop posting your websites in forums !!!

Now, really, do you realize the implications of sites being penalised by search engines because of incoming links from forums?

The only BAD THING is that perhaps google looks at these links as irelevant.

 

I tend to agree with Michael - I don't think any of the big search engines will actually penalize a site's rankings due to off-page factors (It would be too easy to attack competing sites). Worst case scenario IMO would be that these links would carry no weight for those engines.

 

I agree in that links in signatures don't do much for you- niether hurt nor help. At minimium it may help the engines find your sites.

 

Not all forum signatures pass PR, some have rel = nofollow. But I think the main reason is that forum pages in general have low PR, and it's shared out with a lot of other signature links. Once posts drop off the front page, they tend to get buried anyway.

 

i think it dont hurts...may be just help litttle in indexing

 

Thanks for your answers.
I'd love to keep hearing opinions, though.

 

there goes that idea

 

IMO forum links are massively devalued. You only see low PR sites in my sig as DP is a good place to add a site to get it spidered quickly.

 

I strongly agree with that. Also have in mind that most forums don't show signatures in guests (eg. sitepoint) or have the links in rel="nofollow"

In any way the reason for having a signature is to get direct traffic, not SEO.

 

Well.. Google normally devalue un-interesting links.

 

So since the links would be devalued that can effect your ranking or just the actual link's weight, which would really have no effect on anything?

 

I believe this is the case

 

I do hope there is no penalty in the future as I am creating a free signature maker myself.

 

I thinks there will no penalty along with no real SEO benefits also from forum signature links, however they can drive niche specific traffic if you are a valued poster in the particular forum.