hi there, is a contact info optional on us-sites? i really suxx if i come along a good site and cant ask the owner for a link exchange. imho its a bad style, and i wouldnt buy anything from sites like this...
There is no legal requirement that a website have contact information ON the website. However, a website must have contact information at the Whois level for the domain name. Otherwise, the domain could be cancelled by the registrar for invalid contact information. Domain contact information is an ICANN requirement. Josh
Definitely not a legal requirement. However, it does play a little bit into your Google PR having viewable contact details.
If you're putting up images or other materials that are from third parties you definitely want contact information within a terms of service. It also may help with perception from copyright holders who may want to write to you...
Not needed at all. If you are putting up 3rd party content, like images, you have a license with those people and they have your information on file. Perhaps the owner doesn't want link exchange spams. Sure, maybe you are writing a nice email for a great exchange, but that owner (especially if the site is good) will get 100+ bot oriented requests with yours. Who knows.
It's not legally required (unlike, say, Spain, where you have to have a physical contact address) but it makes you look dodgy if you don't have some contact info. People that want to spam you can still pull info from your Whois file, unless you have made that private, so that's not a very convincing rationale. The key thing is that it's hard enough to get people to trust you on the internet. It's a lot harder if you want to be coy about who you really are. Unless you have something to hide, why not put some info out there that let's people know it's a real person, and some kind of contact info that won't burden you unreasonably (e.g., gmail account, whatever). Of course, if you are presently incarcerated, you might want to put up an About Us page that's all sales pitch, and no actual info.
This really isn't a legal discussion, but I can think of one reason not to include contact info. I have a couple sites that are just info sites for some stuff I do. On these sites, I don't want any contact since I'm not open to exchanges and so forth. However, the whois is my company, so nothing being hidden really. Also, these aren't main sites at all. I'm not saying the site(s) the original poster saw was anything similar, just giving at least one excuse.
PR is based solely on backlinks, you're confusing it with the somewhat mythical concept of trust rank.