Should I link to all press mentions of my site?

"If I link back to a press article about our company, will Google perceive this as a reciprocal link and therefore give less weight to the inbound link?"

London, UK

This video is part of a "Grab Bag" series in which Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, answers questions from webmasters. We're not currently taking new video questions, so your best bet for getting an answer about webmaster-related search issues is to head to our help forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• google
• reciprocal links
• press articles

[yyzxyzzy]

Matt, you didn't answer the question. It wasn't "should I link to EVERY press mention," but rather "will Google devalue media links if I link to them." Presumably the answer is yes, as suggested by your comment "by definition, that's a reciprocal link."

[daveashe]

What about using nofollow on these links? or am i correct that google ignores nofollow in terms of link juice?

[thisiswilson2]

@traxdata2k That's not YOUR content unless you ask the original writer to publish it on your site, in which case, they are likely to just ask you to link to the article. So that's not the best solution either.

Very good question that Matt, unfortunately, didn't anwser.

[brettdusek]

@daveashe Thats an iffy situation I think. Again a link to you and a link back is a reciprocal link. I'm certain that while Google spiders won't follow the link, it will still report its existance and weigh it like anything else. If I can check that with my tools, certainly Google can check it with theirs.

[traxdata2k]

so yeah don't do it, get a local copy and stick in on your site. Turn the page into a pdf / screenshot or whatever..

[MaasharuKuri]

mark7144: As if Googlebot gives anything on audience or webmaster situation. It's only a dumb piece of code and as such can only ID facts like direct bidirectional links (reciprocals).

Each direct link (e.g. link page to link page) between two sites is a reciprocal, period. Always has been as per Google, Yahoo, etc. Generic links therefore are better, e.g ONE link to the main page instead of linking to *all* single sections that mention you.

Thus the direct answer to the question is YES.

[woodsandhillsplc]

So that's a yes then?

[mark7144]

Agree with the others, Matt was very unclear in his answer here. He went a step too far by giving the advice he did, he doesn't know about the websites' audience, he doesn't know enough about that webmasters situation to spend most of the video advising whether he should link to all the press articles.

Matt, love your videos but in this video and "Does the size of a website affect its authority" you have failed to answer the question clearly.

[cswpride]

Two things you should know about the northern California tech industry: 1) It is mostly sunny, most of the time, and 2) the dress code is very, very casual.

BTW, Matt did not complete has not completed his PhD, not that there is any reason to now.

[bigal21110]

yah the answer is yes google will consider it as recep. link and will give less wweight.