Google is watching this forum (even display;none links)

[McCarthySites]

I have a google webmaster 'account' (what ever they call it) and it reports all kinds of little tidbits of info about sites that you register with them.

One of those things is 'external links' (sites that list your site on them) and what I found strange is that this forum had over 100 links to my personal website. I don't think I've ever posted that url here.

However, it shows up and I just figured out why.

This forum software enable mouse-over hidden menus that pop up when needed. One of those is for your profile - which includes a menu of
Send a private message, send an email, visit homepage, find all posts, add to buddy list...

So, every time I post here, I get another external link added to Google's stats.... even though the link is usually not visible on the page.

I read a long time ago that Google didn't care about the display state of a link, it would add it to its database and keep on rolling.

Brian

[jrawly]

is that a bad thing?
I thought external links to your sites were good for google ranking?

[McCarthySites]

No, its generally a good thing - however, since the context of our profiles is not displayed on these pages, it was a little surprising to me.

I believe I read somewhere that google ranking goes up the more external links to a site it sees.

[H9NickH]

Originally Posted by irving

Google only? How come yahoo is not watching this site closely?

Not sure, but the majority of users use Google as opposed to other search engines. Google, by far, surpasses the features, content, and stability of other engines.

[dr2web]

You are right when it comes to external links increasing your pagerank, but only if the links are coming from site that has a decent pagerank.

[bingo]

Why should google be watching this forum? Don't make sense to me. And by the way what do you think is much better google or yahoo. This question has been bugging me recently.

[McCarthySites]

google watches anything it can - I suspect it pays attentions to robots.txt - (at least I see it checking mine out)...

[bugarts]

Well if google is indeed watching this site, so? Let it. After all the reason why google is watching or observing this is probably there's a good thing going on around here.