Old link value?

[rob3786]

If you had links from some great sites in the past but they have now gone, do you still get any value from those on your site, or once they are gone its as if they were never there?

[A_Skywalker]

Its very hard to answer this as most likely only google knows, I kind of want to think that they matter even if the link is gone, but sense tells me that after time it wont matter.

[specialagent08]

I personally think that the links would not be of any value and seen by Google as 'Broken Backlinks'

[bonusbeast]

I would say it wouldn't have a direct effect the day or maybe even the week that the link disappears, but one could only assume as time passes and Google continues crawling that page with no link that the link value would completely disappear. But like A_Skywalker said only Google knows the answer for sure!

[casinogod]

I think that once google discovers it is missing it would cease to count it in its algo.

However like A_Skywalker said Only google really knows.

I did take the time to read googles patents (I know Im a nerd) which spelled out lots of the different ways they 'could' assign value for rankign purposes and I do not remember seeing any mention of 'previous but now dead links' being mentioned as a factor at all.

[patmcluk]

I'm with the "once they're gone, they're gone" school of thought. But Google are always a couple of months behind anyway!

[superselector1]

Yes ,If 5-6 links disappear from some good website .Its obviously a huge loss as first of all we lose a good aged link and secondly, high PR and quality of that website ..
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[Doolally]

Once they're gone they're gone.

However, would Google penalise a site that used to have good links from authority sites and doesn't any more? Does that look like the site has gone bad?

[clearlyportals]

Once they're gone they're gone.

However, would Google penalise a site that used to have good links from authority sites and doesn't any more? Does that look like the site has gone bad?

I wouldn't think they would penalise you. You might start to slip in your rankings in terms of position as you lost votes of your sites worth from high ranking sites but I don't think they would flag your site up as being bad and therefore put a big cross next to you?