Do forum signature links help PageRank and SERPS?

This test will seek to determine if forum signature links help PageRank and SERPS.

We are conducting another test to determine if forum message body links help PageRank and SERPS.

Testing Methodology

We will create message threads in a number of web forums related to Search Engine Optimization.

In each message thread we will have a signature link to a web page with a unique string as anchor text.

This web page will have no other inbound links. It will not even be linked from this page.

The web forums which we will ask to participate in our study are:

• Top25Web Search Engine Marketing
• Abakus Internet Marketing
• Webmaster Key
• All Webmaster Forum
• Anthony Parsons
• SEOPark Links Exchange Directory & Resources
• Search Engine Trafic
• Marketing and Link Popularity Forums

Evaluation Methodology

We hope to evaluate two seperate items with this test, PageRank and SERPS.

Evaluating PageRank

1. Go to the message forums listed above and view the message thread relating to our study.
2. Click the link in the message forum to be taken to the test page.
3. View the Page Rank of the test page using the Google Toolbar.

Evaluating SERPS

1. Go to the message forums listed above and view the message thread relating to our study.
2. Note the unique string of anchor text used in the link.
3. Visit any of the search engines below, or any search engine of your choice. Do a search for the unique string which you noted above.

Search Engine	Expected Result
Google	Unknown
Yahoo	Unknown
MSN	Unknown
AltaVista	Unknown
AllTheWeb	Unknown

Caveats

This page was put online on 10 July, 2004. It will take some time for each search engine to crawl and index this page to make this test "live." It will also take some time for us to create the required message threads.

This test will not tell us which web forum (if any) gave us PageRank or SERPS. That question may be the object of a future series of tests.

A malicious person could link to this page using the unique string in the anchor text as link text. This would force a false positive on most search engines and invalidate the test results.

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