One way to ensure a good ranking on Google’s SERPs is to have a number of links from other websites pointing to your site. Google gives PageRank to sites that have a number of links pointing to them.
A popular format for featuring links from link exchanges is a links page. In non-dynamic format, most of these web pages have file names of links.html, links.htm, links.asp and so on.
Recently news came out that Google no longer counts links that appear in pages that contain these file names. According to SearchEngineRoundtable.com, “the theory is that Google is no longer counting links from pages that have the file name links.html, links.html, links.php, links.asp, links.cfm and the like.”
No reason has surfaced as to why Google employs this practice. Although, the outcry does criticize Google’s approach. SERT quotes a moderator from JimWorld.com, who says “Google does not count links from pages named ‘links.html’ is just hogwash, in my opinion.”
A method of going around this odd policy is to not name your links pages with the link.html filename anymore. SERT recommends using the filename of resources.html or something similar to that.
Speculation around this practice is that Google values links appearing naturally within web pages more highly. Google may have enacted this policy to prevent link spamming, as well.
The complaint many have is that since, historically speaking, many websites use links pages to feature sites that they like and/or are associated with and have no intention of using these pages as spam.
Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News
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