This will blow some minds - heads should be exploding pretty soon.

My signature has a link to a web site I have nothing to do with. I was reading it a while back, it was thought provoking, and I thought it was cooler than my signature, so I copied and pasted the whole quote, and a link came with it. Before I did that, I had links to a couple posts on my blog that I'm proud of.

My PageRank used to be 4, now it's 5. Giving up forum signature links raised my PR.

Note that that isn't a causal relationship - shedding forum links didn't raise my PR, they just happened to occur at the same time. But on the other hand, it also shows that forum links can't have been very well respected by search engines, if giving a bunch of them up happened at the same time that my PageRank increased from 4 to 5. And that's the lesson we can all learn from my experience - if you're looking for forum links, they won't help you at all.

I suppose forum links have some effect, at least it won't be a negative one. The fact that these type of links are a form of duplicate content on pages that are heavy with other duplicate content isn't very helpful, however.

I removed my blog link from my signature long ago (before this thread ). This wasn't due to some silly PR calculation though, I found better phrases to put there (plus I still have my LBP link, yay ).

I strongly doubt removing your sig or blog link from this forums profile had anything to do with your pr raising

Sorry, that was me, I linked to you from my black hat porn sites

Oh... really ???? I put my links all the time, then how can I deal that ?

maybe reading the WHOLE of the first post would help!

It's a bit odd but I never had the same effects with a link on my siggy that I have been experimenting on. It gained a PR3 and even ranked on the 1st page of the SERP solely from forum sigs.

I think PR also has something to do with the age of a domain. I could be wrong but based on some observations - age of the domain seems to affect PR.

It was probably completely coincidence. Forum links probably don't help out a whole lot but a link is a link and they definitely won't hurt you unless you are posting the same link a couple times per post. And in case you guys haven't heard yet, PR is not that important... I would rather have a bunch of links from a good forum (aka webmaster-talk) than a higher PR.

I think you just have to decide whether it is more important at your stage of development to get a lot of forum exposure, or a better PR - If that connection is even accurate. I think i'd rather get forum exposure at first and a lot of people pull in major traffic that way.

Even so, if your signature is relevant... And you are posting in a relevant forum/topic, you may get some visits from people who are genuinely curious about your products/services. I am not going to outright remove my signature at least Also, I do believe they help 0.1% or something to G' PR

Anybody bother reading this bit ???????

Note that that isn't a causal relationship - shedding forum links didn't raise my PR, they just happened to occur at the same time. But on the other hand, it also shows that forum links can't have been very well respected by search engines, if giving a bunch of them up happened at the same time that my PageRank increased from 4 to 5. And that's the lesson we can all learn from my experience - if you're looking for forum links, they won't help you at all.

Shhh Chris..

Facts are not allowed in discussions about PR, just wild guesses and maybes..

hmmn,. im not using sig just to rely my results of SEO process so np.=) Thanks for sharing mate.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

This will blow some minds - heads should be exploding pretty soon.

My signature has a link to a web site I have nothing to do with. I was reading it a while back, it was thought provoking, and I thought it was cooler than my signature, so I copied and pasted the whole quote, and a link came with it. Before I did that, I had links to a couple posts on my blog that I'm proud of.

My PageRank used to be 4, now it's 5. Giving up forum signature links raised my PR.

Note that that isn't a causal relationship - shedding forum links didn't raise my PR, they just happened to occur at the same time. But on the other hand, it also shows that forum links can't have been very well respected by search engines, if giving a bunch of them up happened at the same time that my PageRank increased from 4 to 5. And that's the lesson we can all learn from my experience - if you're looking for forum links, they won't help you at all.

Hah??? How come removing your sigs from forums increase your PR??? Do you have any explanation on that? Im just curious.

READ POST No 12!!!!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by MrCat

I think PR also has something to do with the age of a domain. I could be wrong but based on some observations - age of the domain seems to affect PR.

Every day, the sun comes up about when the clock says 6:00. The clock saying it's 6 am doesn't actually do it - I can lie to the clock, set it for 6 in the morning, and the sun doesn't come up again. The two things just sort of go together, in a less tightly coupled way.

In the same way, age of a domain or of the content on a domain, isn't what causes PR to go up, but it goes along with it. Page Rank is a measure of the links pointing at your pages, and the strength or merit of those links. As time goes by, two things happen - (1) you acquire more links, and (2) your domain gets older. Hopefully, all of us are getting some links from places we don't even know about.

Cool stuff I dont believe it also

The sudden rise in PR must be attributed to something else. I do understand that John didn't mean to say that removing his forum links resulted to the rise of PR so please calm down Chris, don't kill me yet I do understand that what he means is that forum links have little to no bearing to one's PR. If forum links had a significant effect in one's PR then removing them would have had an adverse effect to his PR but it didn't. So probably due to other factors, more backlinks, more link love and all that, his PR actually got pushed up a notch.

Though I acknowledge this observation and this valuable information based on experience, I still think that forum links in the form of signatures don't exactly hurt so it doesn't matter if you have them or you don't. It's like bringing an umbrella on a sunny day. You don't really know for sure if it's going to rain, but you're going to bring one just in case.

Perhaps it was just a coincident. Ive never heard of this before. I dont think my links in forums has done me any harm.