So who's next for the BD treatment?

[glengara]

From what I've read so far most of the outcry over the new linking/indexing "factor" has come from MFAs, with relatively little coming from sectors that are also fond of the odd reciprocal link.

If this linkage factor sticks, and is not specifically aimed at MFAs, it could be an interesting summer for the hotel/holiday/real estate and other "Wild West" sectors...

[jimbeetle]

Well, a whole bunch of real estate sites have already gotten hit, so much so that I don't even have to look at them anymore to know what the problems are. Much of it results from run of site links and heavy interlinking as in the examples Matt Cutts posted. Other real estate sites were gutted because of round robin link farms.

I tend to think that any site that has skated by so far is okay, but yeah, a lot of folks in travel and such should take really hard looks at their sites' linking patterns. If they've been hit that's probably the problem no matter how much they protest. If they're on the cusp of the crawl (or however the heck Matt phrased it), it should only help.

[AnthonyCea]

So the "Web Rings" are not the place to be anymore guys :confused:

[FDJA]

I've had my head buried in work since I started my site in 2002, so unfortunately I'm not up to speed on linking practices and what's good and what's bad and why that is...

Good, Bad or Indifferent?

Linked internal site pages within my sites, primarily because I noticed that they seem to get indexed more thouroghly and of course it helps with visitor navigation to get around. (each page has links to most other pages).

Links to other similar sites I run. I got out of the habit when I stopped building similar sites, but I still have gobs of pages which have outbound links to my other sites. I did this primarily to allow spiders to crawl both ways and to allow site visitors to visit the other sites as well as hoping that the similar subject interest from each site will provide more page rank relevancy.

What are the very rudimentary basics of linking terminolgy and why are certain ways of doing it considered taboo, while others are acceptable?

Thanks

[glengara]

Taking internal links, with a good site architecture and using proper anchor text they're extremely useful for ranking internal pages that may never see an external link.

They can be overdone though, in particular with pages that may have minimum content while maximising internal linkage.
It appears these can be deemed an attempt to artificially inflate a site, and if you happen to be running AS as well.......

*Links to other similar sites I run.*

IMO limited crosslinking for "branding" purposes is safe enough, but do it for PR/ranking purposes and it can get very risky.

[Robert_Charlton]

Think of links as references. If you ask someone for references, and all he can give you are recommendations from his own family members, then you tend to doubt what those references say.

On the other hand, if all of his references are from established people in his field who are unrelated to him, and he has a lot of them, then there's a big element of trust.

Everything else is in between.