Are links in footers treated differently than paragraph links?

Are links in footers treated differently than paragraph links?

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Added on Thursday 20 August 2009 14:00:40
by GoogleWebmasterHelp
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Andres from Boston, MA asks:

"Does Google treat links in footers differently than links surrounded by text (e.g. in a paragraph)?"

This video is part of a "Grab Bag" series in which Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, answers questions from users. 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

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Comment(s)

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magnetica2288

@agapitoflores001 if u listened he says they reserve the right, in other words, if they see the need to treat it differently they can
Wednesday 11 January 2012 10:53:44
magnetica2288

@DadsonFireORG But you would still moan if he did just say "Yes"
Wednesday 11 January 2012 10:52:16
aldragon1

LIES : Check this godaddy links, SO WHY godaddy gained Rankings?
Saturday 24 December 2011 02:13:35
agapitoflores001

I am a bit confused in what the answer really is. He didn't sat yes nor no.
Saturday 12 November 2011 02:03:52
mr24bd

i only have 'temporary' and 'permanent' option under "link? options"... no 'cloaked' option at all. any idea why? thx
Monday 31 October 2011 08:08:24
mr24bd

Yeah I'll be at SES NY and the SEO haters run rampant,? just focus on the positive folks!
Sunday 30 October 2011 08:15:07
TheDeepEndDesign

looks like a cloaked "yes" to me
Monday 10 October 2011 18:26:13
LinkWorxSeo

The links in the footer are primarily for structure purposes and do not do hold as much significance as the links within the content on the page. As part of proper on page optimization, this is not only for allowing the user to navigate the website easier, but it links your pages internally. While most links within your content use a magnitude of anchor text allowing you to link with multiple types of keywords to other pages the footer usually contains navigational links. Out of space...
Wednesday 05 October 2011 17:44:16
XSAoRAD

@DadsonFireORG If he gave out clear cut yes or no answers in every video, every viewer would take it as gospel and exploit his tips. So, should Matt say "Yes, links in paragraphs are more valuable than in footers", many people would stuff the links that were in footers, into their paragaphs and look junk.
Monday 26 September 2011 21:16:26
krnetdk

im still not being wiser, it sonds like paragraph links are a lot better than footer links or what?
Sunday 22 May 2011 23:33:31
EverythingBranded

im starting to give up on seo im convinced know body knows the real way how to do it !
Tuesday 10 May 2011 16:37:45
MrOldSchoolApps

Good video, tip to be noted
Wednesday 13 April 2011 16:55:22
Serviceswebdesign

Hmm.. OK my take-away is that links in the footer are usually not in context to page content. And as they are repeated on every page they are more or less disregarded. Links in context to content.. read relevancy to subject.. Will carry more weight to the linked page assuming of course that the linked page is in context to the originating content.. Greater sophistication? I guess so
Tuesday 19 October 2010 03:47:53
netandful

as far as i can tell ive seen pages rankin high for new keywords with 5, 7 footer or blogrolls from huge related sites. so u can figure whats the truth
Thursday 14 October 2010 21:25:19
Johnsonharris

Yes Matt, i agreed that the links in the content has more value than the links in the footer or in the header menu. most of the visitor, who is going to read content definitely they will click the link in the content, if the content is very informative. But the site should have the links in the footer also. Thanks for the Video.
Thursday 09 September 2010 07:01:38
enlargemedia

It seems to me that the question was about link credit, not the distribution of PR. Since contextual placement matters, I.E. "Headers" matter and where they appear matters, one can assume that the placement of links matters too. There are over 200 algo's right? How many can you imagine?
Monday 12 April 2010 13:47:12
PlaceboNis

+1 Thats true
Thursday 21 January 2010 17:34:22
DadsonFireORG

Good God its yes or no Matt! As usual vague.....much more sophisticated.....reserve the right to treat differnt....may, it might not.....You never simply say YES we do treat it different...but disclaimer we reserve the right....you never say anything honestly, yet we have to get our sites found and u want us to be honest.....where is the clear answers they never exist? reserve the right??? come on!
Friday 02 October 2009 00:05:13
PageOneSEO

Interesting video. It's about what I'd figured. I remember someone else who does SEO telling me about his SEO "silver bullet" being footer links and apparently how great it was. Maybe not so great?
Tuesday 22 September 2009 21:21:02
timstaines1

That's not at all what he said. He's never going to tell us something that specific. He said they reserve the right to weight paragraph links differently than links on other parts of the page that might not be as relevant to the content on that page. He did NOT say: "Blogroll links that appear on 200 different pages of 1 site are less valuable than "incontent" links from another site." His statement was relative to the two different types of links on the same page, see the difference?
Friday 21 August 2009 08:16:54
Sunniescoupon

bosduvarlar - Incontent links hold more editorial weight than footer links because the vast majority of incontent links over the web are much more relevant to the sites they point to than footer links. Matt pretty much just reiterated the fact that getting incontent links from niche related websites hold a lot more weight than blogroll links on unrelated websites.
Friday 21 August 2009 02:39:02
almightyvegeta87

Agreed DirtyMonkey815 ! Site wide links, footer links, menus are not useful as links inside a paragraph. Also, Link exchanges can take a back seat now.
Friday 21 August 2009 01:42:02
fritzfromlondon

if you don't want to watch the video - the answer is 'yes'
Friday 21 August 2009 01:39:20
bosduvarlar

I still did not understand from the video which of these links are better? Footer links or links in main content. And how do google classify links as footer and main content links?? Video would be more explanotory..
Friday 21 August 2009 01:35:09