Not as dumb a question as it might sound. Imagine I buy a domain name tonight, and put up a site at www.Some-Domain-Nobody's-Ever-Heard-Of.info and because I like the idea of voting with links and web democracy, I use this brand new site to link to all the people here that I like and respect. Only, there are no links to my site, it's like an island without a bridge, Google will never see them, and they don't help any of you. That's obvious, and so is nofollow links don't matter to SERPs.

What I want to know about are the less obvious ones. Say:

1. Google crawls a site linking to yours, but doesn't index the page?
2. A page points to your site, but it's in the supplemental index?
3. A page linking to you that Google used to index and put in the SERPs, but drops?
   1. A page linking to you shows err for PR, but comes up under quotes for its title?

More than anything, I'm curious, and as I'm learning more about SEO, I'm having more awe for the people who are really experts and know so much. I hate to single anyone out, but Adam is like an encyclopedia of knowledge and I'm a dwarf next to the guy. That's sad when my intellectual superior is the biggest idiot on the internet, which is some accomplishment. Even the whole research team of one of my favorite anchormen, Keith Olbermann, couldn't find a bigger idiot after scowering the whole internet. I want to learn more.

Also, I get about 10 readers a day on average to my blog, although the only links I've created have been the signature here. I know our posts get mirrored on MFA sites, so every now and then I change those. Blogger seems to ping Technorati, so I seem to get links from them. And then a few other blogs have linked to some of my quality material, so with a few exceptions, I have a bunch of low quality links.

I honestly think I unique ways of looking at things, and that other word nerds like me would enjoy reading my content if they were aware of it. So I think my next experiment will be directories, and I know many of these will be low quality links, probably wind up in the supplementals, although I'm not really sure. Some of the other things I listed might happen with these new links I can get by myself. And I think some of my content could almost go viral among people who are political junkies, especially when it comes to stuff that's not on CNN. It's time for me to step up the effort to get my stuff seen, so it at least has a chance.

In no better light to answer with authority, I say all links count, if you ever use the google.com/webmasters for any of your sites, you will discover (after google has updated your inbound links - which might take a while) that stuff like nofollow'ed links appear in the list, links from signatures are repeated for different pages on same domain. I have had in those links nofollow links from social bookmarks actually ...

They might not all get the same weight but I say THEY ALL COUNT.

And to avoid your 1.2.3 questions you try to get links from as many sites as possible so if one of the links is not of any value some of the others will be ... and I don't think google can penalize your site for being linked from a "bad" site because its not in your control. It can at most give that link a value of 0 (zero),

So in general I would not worry as much about where I put my links ("worry about where you put your signature and your d---" as the Greek saying goes )

To paraphrase George Orwell;

"All links are created equal. Just some are created more equal than others"

all links count in some way or another. Even if their weighting value (assuming there is a scale) is 0, the anchor text is still content and could earn a click through.

I think I can rightly deduce that the best trick is to get as many links as possible. Some will have no value and some will have great value. Will there be ones that can be of detrimental value?

Theoretically, an inbound link by itself is not of detrimental value. Don't be surprised, however, if you see an increased emphasis on punishing sites that buy links for SEO purposes; Google has already indicated that they're looking at the paid link scenario, and it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for them to do something like that, or for MSN/Yahoo! to follow for that matter.

And yes, I am quite happy to say that I apparently am the Biggest Idiot on the Internet according to both Google and MSN (Yahoo! apparently hasn't indexed the page yet.) It's such an honor to be a bigger idiot than that guy who scared the crap out of his kid with that ghost popup or Mahir or Super Greg or even that dude who did My Trailer Park.

The guy who scared his kid? SEO is a strange field.

I'm ever so slightly curious about the answers to your questions myself, but I think the advice people have given really answers the question. Our new member's recommendation to get as many links as possible from as many sources, so that when a few wind up being not very useful you still have others that help you, is right on the money. Literally. Bill Gates owns more stock in companies other than his own than he does in Microsoft. The first rule of investing is to diversify. There doesn't seem to be any good reason that shouldn't apply here.

And as far as experience goes, I've seen plenty of nofollow links Google Webmaster Tools myself. Someone did a study and found that Google and other major SEs apply anchor text from nofollow links in the same way they do with other links, and that Ask ignores the nofollow altogether. The main benefit of nofllow links is that someone liked your content enough to "socially" bookmark it.

My AboutUs page has gone supplemental, so my guess is I get credit for whatever links existed at the time Google's spider last crawled the page, and that it could be six months before they see it again. I could be wrong. But then I'm almost sure those links don't carry much weight, if they have any at all. That's why I'd be crazy to rely on one directory for my overall link profile, and I don't want to rely on one search engine ( or even all of them ) for my traffic.

Besides, it sounds like you have at least some of the best type of links there are: the natural, organic ones. I liked your article on the Caucasus Mountains and the term Caucasian, and the Chechen wars. It rambles a little, but it's fascinating, and the first paragraph is captivating enough to make me read the novel-length post. If I'm ever in that area, I'll link to your post from the photo pages I create there. Our sites really don't seem to overlap, but it sounds like other people have linked to you because you wrote something that captivated them enough to want to share your insight with their visitors.

When you can do that, you really don't need to worry about the fine grained details of ranking algorithms.

Oh, and for the record, the kind of link that counts is the one people click on. My AboutUs listing doesn't send any traffic, which is more important than whatever effect it has on SEO.

Forrest, why is your About Us page supplemental ? how do you know ?
It was cached by google on 30th of May 2007 !!

I Agree, the best links are the ones people click on, that is why sometimes they cost

Our sites really don't seem to overlap, but it sounds like other people have linked to you because you wrote something that captivated them enough to want to share your insight with their visitors.

When you can do that, you really don't need to worry about the fine grained details of ranking algorithms.

Dat's what I'm talkin' 'bout, homeslice! This is what most people completely miss about SEO; that the very links they're trying to get for SEO purposes are usually the ones they should be trying to get for user purposes.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

...but Adam is like an encyclopedia of knowledge and I'm a dwarf next to the guy.

Let's see... if you're a dwarf... I'm a bacteria. I think by just trial and error I've managed to do well at SEO (could we call it dumb luck?) - along with Adam there are a lot of very smart people in thsi forum. Best move I ever made was joining this and learning the reasons WHY things work - not just mechanically applying the trial and error methods.

learning the reasons WHY things work - not just mechanically applying the trial and error methods.

If only more people would start to understand this.