How does Google treat links modified by referrer?

[I, Brian]

I took someone on board who had a -30 penalty. Their link profile is awful and is probably the cause of the issue - basically, 20,000+ links from article submissions to their homepage.

I can't do anything about the links existing, but if I set up server rules on the site server that redirect visitors based on their referrer source to other pages on the site, or even to other sites, then how would Google treat these links?

ie:

Scenario A: The present

Loads of nasty links > link to homepage

Scenario B: Server rules

Lotso nasty homepage links > redirected to other pages
Lotso nasty links > redirected to other sites
A few links > left untouched

Would it continue to be the case that Google treats the original links according to the HTML code used?

Or will Google look at where the actual link refers to according to the server rules set up?

In other words - will redirecting the referrer mean that Google will treat the redirected links any differently?

[jimbeetle]

If you redirect links to the home page to many different pages by referrer you might wind up confusing Google and maybe wiping out the home page. In essence, for each referrer you'll be telling Googlebot that the home page is now in a different location. I don't know exactly how it would all turn out, but don't think I'd like to try it.

It might be better to leave well enough alone and maybe concentrate on getting better, more relevant links to the interior pages.

[I, Brian]

Thanks for the reply - I hadn't considered that as a possibility.

I figure on treating the site as sandboxed - ie, just leave it well alone, as I 't think setting up links is going to be a really risky strategy in terms of getting returns back.

I've already got the guy a second website developed using something else he already had in storage, so hopefully we can get him running on PPC + links very soon.

Just trying to see if I could find a short-cut solution to the existing penalty issue. :)

[MarketingMon]

What is a -30 Penalty? How do I find out what sort of rating my clients have?