Do search engines penalize pages named links.shtml?
This test will seek to determine if search engines penalize pages named links.shtml.
There is a constantly recurring rumor that search engines penalize links from pages named links.htm, links.html, or links.shtml.
The rumor also sometimes suggests that search engines penalize pages with the string "links" somewhere in the filename, such as "new-links".
Testing Methodology
This page links to two sub-pages:
These pages both contain the same outbound links.
These pages both also include some extra text, to confuse any possible duplicate page algorithm.
Evaluation Methodology
Check the inbound links for the pages listed on each of these links pages.
If the links from both pages are shown, then one could assume with some degree of confidence that that search engine does not penalize pages named "links.shtml".
If only the links from "newsgroup-contributors.shtml" are shown, then one could assume with some degree of confidence that that search engine does penalize pages named "links.shtml".
| Search Engine | Expected Result |
|---|---|
| Unknown | |
| Yahoo | Unknown |
| MSN | Unknown |
| AltaVista | Unknown |
| AllTheWeb | Unknown |
Caveats
This page was put online on 31 May, 2004. It will take some time for each search engine to crawl and index this page to make this test "live."
Google's "link:" command normally only shows links with PR4 or better. This page may not have PR4 for a long long time.
Google officially states that the "link:" command does not show all inbound links. The other search engines may behave similarly.
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