Does Google ignore links pages with "links" in the url? There has been some debate on that - especially since Google's big algo change last November.

I just did a search on Google and they have 293,000,000 web pages listed with "links" in the url. If you look at these links pages and see who they link to and then check some of those sites for backward links - you find that the links page is indeed counted even though it has the word "links" in the url.

Now, there is also evidence that many links pages with or without "links" in the url are not counted by Google. It seems to me that it has more to do with whether Google perceives the page to be of any value or whether it looks like a participant in a link farm.

I don't think having "links" in the url causes Google to ignore a page - it is the content of the page that causes Google to ignore the page. I continue to link to pages with "links" in the url as long as the page is listed in Google.

But since no one knows for sure, I no longer use "links" in the urls of my own reciprocal links pages

Hey Doug,

I found some examples of backlinks with the word "links" as did you but also many higher PR pages with "links that were not showing as backlinks for the pages that had links so I too have completely changed all our sites.

Even if there's something not fully implemented now it just seems like the logical thing to do as filtering these pages would be very easy for any of the SE's.

Can anyone here with a real estate site show us your "links" page that counts as a backlink for your link partners that has been created since Florida?

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Rich
Advertising, Marketing & Virtual Tours

If you do a search for "naples real estate" and then check the #1 site's backlinks you do find a few of the backlinks that use "links" as part of their url but most are part of a bigger word or used with the underscore (which Google does not see as differentiating words). There is one page however that is named "links.html" in the list of backlinks.

Overall there does seem to be very few pages called "links" that are counted as backlinks though - but most links pages do not have Page Rank high enough to show up in the list.

As you say Rich, it is probably a good idea to call your pages something else anyway.