Here’s a bit of interesting info about how Google views links. Apparently the search engine trusts them less if they’ve been changed.
That is according to former Googler Pedro Dias, who used to work on the Search Quality and Webspam team at the company (via Search Engine Roundtable). Here’s a series of tweets from him:
Did you know Google is less likely to trust a link once it has changed from the 1st time it was seen?
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@rustybrick My brain 😛
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@rustybrick You know I'd rather leave it at this… I'd rather refrain from implying I'm speaking for Google ;^)
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
IMPORTANT: less likely to trust != bad
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@rustybrick Yes, but I'd rather protect myself from being sued 🙂
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@ThomasLenting Depends if it was crawled before or not. I wouldn't fret too much about this, it's not necessarily bad.
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@DaveNaylor *I would say* not as much as the 1st time it was seen. But as I said before people shouldn’t fret about it.
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@DaveNaylor This would require way too much effort for any "neg seo” guys to achieve anything
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
@DaveNaylor Like I said, "less trust" doesn’t mean it’s bad or negative. Specially if it’s on a reputable site.
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) July 1, 2014
So take from that what you will.