Over the last year or more Google has discounted most web pages that contain links to Realtor websites - they show a grey bar on the toolbar (meaning that PR value has not been assessed) or less commonly - the toolbar will show a white bar (meaning a very low PR). the value of having links on these pages has likely been greatly reduced.

Lately, this has been extended to include almost all profiles and blogs on community type sites - negating the value of those links as well.

On blogs that actually reside on a Realtor's own site, the main entry page retains Page Rank but all of the indivual post pages usually are grey barred.

Article pages and even many interior pages on Realtor websites seem to suffer the same fate.

It seems like Google has declared all out war on links of any kind and view community sites as being frequented mostly by those looking for "link juice". They are probably right of course as many agents begin blogs on multiple community/blog/networking sites that link back to their primary website. And "everybody and his dog" seems to have a community site offering blogs and/or profiles now.

Google is not counting on people to use "no follow" - they are just not counting links period on most web pages nowadays.

The bright side of all this is that it probably does not require as many links to rank well as it used to.

Has anyone else been noticing this as well? What do you think about it all?

The other night I was checking out some of the blogs listed in my real estate blog directory, and basically all of the blogs that resided in real estate blog communities had their posts grey-barred - even posts that were over 6 months old - so it isn't just that Google has not updated PR yet.

I then checked out a sampling of blogs that were not in the directory which confirmed that blog posts within real estate blog communities (Active Rain, REW, Real Town) were seemingly being treated differently than blog posts that reside in stand-alone blogs, blogs that are part of a Realtor's site, and even blogs Wordpress and Blogspot.

So there is less bang for the time spent when spending that time at blogging communities.

I am not an anti blogger - I do expand on this and other reasons to avoid blog communities in a post - Blog Communities A Big Waste Of Time Now? - in my own blog

Actually, I see many realtors nailing rankings with only blogspot sidebar links. Many of the pages are TBPR 0 and many are in the supplemental index, but the pages collectively drive enough anchor text to nail front page rankings for lucrative long tails.

TBPR 0 doesn't necessarily mean the links from that page are devalued or discounted. It can mean that links TO that page have been devalued IF the page's TBPR have been slipping over time (e.g. where vanessafoxnude.com went from TBPR 7 to a 6 due to the majority of her links coming from SEO blogs, and many of those blogs having paid links on them).

Links from community sites are definitely not a long term strategy, since over time I agree they will be devalued. Matt Cutts said, for example, that Wikipedia's sitewide nofollow was unnecessary (implying Google already dealt with those user generated links algorithmically).

I have some sites with low PR and very few back links that are moving up in the serps based only on on-site seo.

Using links as a way to rate/rank sites is out dated and I believe it will be history before too long. If content is king it is about time they started reading it.

As far as blogs go, I have always maintained that they were not the place to put your good content. All of my good content goes on static web pages.

I came across a real estate site the other day that was ranking #1 in an area that was not uncompetitive - and the site had just one backlink showing (from a directory). No so long ago it would have been impossible to rank #1 without having a generous amount of links.

I like that - perhaps it will cut down on the link requests

No, I think that's not enough to prove you're claim that such action has been taken by Google. It all depends on how well you promote your site, who knows what those gray bared blogs are up to but in other blog directory I can still see blogs with PR4.

The sentences that you quoted referred to "web pages that contain links to Realtor websites" - and you are misunderstanding that phrase.

The "web pages" refers to the actual pages that the links reside on - which means links pages, blog posts, etc. It is not meant to refer to the main entry page of the website (in that case the phrase would have been "web sites that contain...") - which will still have PR.

I get it now, one thing I've come up is those webpages where the realtor's website reside turned gray or being gray because they have more outbound links than inbound links.

Getting more inbound links from different domains would certainly cure any PR issues for most pages.

I posted something related in this thread most of you guys know it so just for those who don't http://www.agentsonline.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=221573

I had a PR5 for a FSBO real estate website, a prominent one. We discovered our marketing was off and changed the company to mainstream real estate, no flat fees anymore. Got the IDX feed, thousands of listings, and what happens...

When we did that our site went from a PR5 to a PR2 in less than a month. We did change domain names but in the past we have been able to use 301 redirects and "transfer" the PR virtually overnight to the new domain, that can't be it.

THe assumptions are true, webrings and link exchanges can get you in a lot of trouble. Doing it the hard way, the right way, is best. As is always.