This thread is open for all but I especially would like Will's input/comments... Will, you have run experiments after which you have concluded forum signature links do not provide PR nor SERPs benefits. Personally, I don't care about my sig links affecting PR or SERPs ... but I really, really need footer links in forums to be counted for SERPs becuase I have many forum sites. At any rate, I ran an incredibly simply test after reading one of your posts earlier this week... On Monday of this week I added a footer link to one of my forum sites (www.seopark.com/forums) with the anchor text "boomerang blowtorch" (a search term with a mere 860 results in google) and a URL to a site I just put up on Monday (www.itch.com). As of last night, itch.com is the #1 result for a search on boomerang blowtorch. I am now going to run some simple experiments with my sig links ... but, I have hard time believing google went to the trouble to penalize/filter sig links yet they didn't touch footer links. Seems to make no sense because it would be incredibly simple to make an SEO mod to change how sig links are displayed and get around Google's penalty. So ... still experiementing but wanted to share the immediate result of "boomerang blowtorch".
How can a search engine differentiate between a footer link and a sig link? A link is a link... isn't it?
I agree, there must be a huge variation in how sig's are coded into a forum. It's quite possible that it would be nearly impossible to distinguish between them without getting confused and ignoring real links (non-sigs) A link is a link... but there's going to be a ton of them on a thread view with X posts and everyone having sig links.
I can thinks of lots of ways they could identify them.. and yes, from my experience, sig links are almost completely useless, really. it doesn't look like "other" forum links are all that great either.. but I still leave mine up anyway
I think there's lots of reasons why they're useless... but I don't think search engines decided sig's were "bad" and filtered them out. Being useless is likely to be a byproduct of all the other factors.
Take a look @ one of my sites that's not even done: www.memoriesbox.com - I've got a PR6, and rank decently for some search terms already... and every single backlink is from a forum sig link (except for a couple from a footer link in one of my other sites)... Sig's are not useless at all.
just because backlinks are showing doesn't mean they're counting... I've got thousands and thousands of sig links. I'd give them all up for 6 or so decent, on topic PR5/6 links.
How else would I have gotten a PR 6 and achieved decent rankings? The site's not even finished yet. They obviously have to count.
Hi Disgust, How about giving up your sig only on DP forum and replacing it with my links? In exchange of 2 PR4 links? Game? Ajeet
sure. 1) identify them by the copyright notices at the bottom- vbulletin, phpbb, xmb, etc. 2) identify them by the urls (could be avoided obviously with mod rewrite etc) 3) identify sig links by links that appear under a "_______" Ajeet: PM me the pages they'd appear on and I'll definitely consider it thebassman: SERPs placement and PR boosts ARE different... but I've got literally thousands and thousands of sig links, and it hasn't done a whole lot for my PR OR rankings. I can notice a much more noticable increase when a new, on topic site links to me.
It is quite easy to "fool" the methods you've mentioned above for differentiating between sig and footer links. For e.g. What if I type in a few lines of plain text under the "__________" and then place the link? What if I place this text "This forum was developed by " and then the vBulletin copyright link from the bottom of the page in my sig? What about the "Contact Us" and "Digital Point Solutions" links on this page above the copyright? What will the search engine treat them like?
not sure i' understand this but couldn't they be identified by the random nature by which they occur on each page?- ie the footer links are present on every page, but someone would have to have replied to every single thread ever to have this occur for a sig link. all google has to do is look at the all the forum as a whole and compare each page and it would quickly beocome clear which links were footer links and which were sigs - or even the way the code is arranged - i can tell the difference between links in a message and footer links by looking at view source - surely an SE could do this too (ok mainly because it says <!--message--> in the code!)
vlead is raising a good point. I don't think google would target forum script names, it doesn't seem their style they like to try and go for a "one size fits all" rather than getting messy with too many things that can't be expressed "mathematically". The only one of those reasons I saw that seemed like it could work was the ________ one, although that still is likely to filter links that aren't real sig links.
Saying sig links don't "count for anything" is just plain silly. They most likely only help you to a certain point or to a certain amount of links. They have value. Now I don't think they are going to put you at the top of the SERPs for a competitive search term, but they can definitely get a site jumpstarted and help push you up in the SERPs.
But don't you think this is because you just continually are adding new posts to the same forums that already have hundreds of your sigs? I mean we all know links from the same domain degrade in value as you get additional links. Basically, once you have 20-50 posts in a single forum, your additional sig links from more postings are basically worthless... just like getting 1,000 links from any type of site would be worthless (beyond the first 20-50 that is). Hmmmm ..... me thinks there is an opportunity for a new forum MOD ... the ability to list as many sig links as you want in your profile and then have the forum software randomly pick a couple to show at the bottom of each post ... hmmm
That's a great idea...!! a rotating sig of some sort... hehe. I think you got it dead on, though Virginia Realtors.