I have recently been approached by an advertiser to display close to 70 links at the bottom of my web site(s). All of these links are unrelated to the content on my site. I have already agreed to about 40 of them at the bottom and I have a few other links on my site that are not directly related to the content. My concern is that having all of these unrelated links on my site will cause me to be penalized by Google and other search engines. My sites have valid content and are sticky. They have a good following within their subject matter. But does anyone know if there is a penalty for having so many unrelated links?
Non-relevant, non-authoritative outbound links will do no good to the advertiser IMO, and possibly devalue, though not necessarily decrease, your PR IMO.
Even if they were relevant links, do you (and your link partner) understand that with that many outgoing links on a page, especially if they are site wide as it seems is the case, the PR value of those links to the target page(s) is going to be negligible? Passed PR = .85 * {PR of your page} / {number of outgoing links on page}
Well, when you make it a simple math problem, it comes out even worse - and more realistic; great information Minstrel.
If he's willing to shell out the dollars, then I'm willing to put the ads up as long as they don't devalue my site as a whole. Thanks for the information guys.