As Google announced, link directories and link farms are no longer considered as part of the ranking algothrim. Is it means link popularity is less important after the change? Absolutely not. Google sees social media as a substitue of the link directories. The move encourages people to leave their own signature with website URL after each and every entries in social media. Thus it is not uncommon if you see URLs appears on forum entries. What’s more, people loves to include a hyperlink to corresponding website in their quotes. The reason is that they can avoid any potential copyright issue by giving references, and also to optimize the entry with leaving a pingback to the author. It is kinda like exchaning business card with one another! In short, Google needs to understand the popularity of your link pages to grade the importance and relevancy of your site.

Written by Eugene Wong on April 4, 2009.