Rumour-or-Proof | Naming a page "Links" will "

[~0]

Could new relevancy algorithms have been programmed into Google and others that would essentially de-value any Web page named links.html or even links2.html in SERPs

This theory has been floating around - but how can one prove it -especially on Google - which never displays ALL the backwards links in it's search results

[google junky]

I did a search for Links
The 4th one that came up was a links.html page
That kind of takes care of the mystery there I think.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=links

[cbp]

Its BS - we had a thread on it a few weeks ago.

Check the backlinks to WPW - links.htm pages show up.

The person posting in the thread a few weeks ago who was adamant that they were not counted got a bit pissed when I counted a dozen backlinks to one site that had the page name links.htm in them!!!

Here is the thread:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=28506
(one of the posters in that thread ended up getting banned)

CBP

[rlrouse]

Discussion about the links.html "penalty" has been floating around for some time now. It's an urban legend.

[ferret77]

it happend on some of my sites

[buddhu]

Penalising pages called links.* would be pretty stupid for so many reasons. It would entail the SEs making a lot of assumptions.

However, that said, I renamed our links page to directory.asp some time back just in case. I don't believe the rumours, but hey - this is one where playing safe didn't inconvenience me at all, so WTH ;-)

[cbp]

Google has only ever shown a sample of backlinks to a site - criteria for being in the sample has changed over time. It used to be >PR4 (or a very high 3) - a while ago that changed to somthing else; now it appears to have changed to a random sample.

The something else a while ago, might have been that pages called links.xxx were not shown in the sample and it did appear that this might have been the case for a while (its not the case now), BUT:

1. If you looked hard enough in the backlinks to some sites (especially some high PR sites), it was possible to find the occasional links.xxx page show up. There was definitly something that Google doing, so that most links.xxx pages were not showing up for most sites, however:

2. Just becasue a link is not shown in the backlink sample did not mean that it did or did not pass PR and was counted by Google, or not - thats were the myth started --> many jumped to the conclusion that just because a links.xxx page was not in the backlinks, it was not counted --- we now know that the myth was based on this false premise.

CBP