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Do Links from PDFs ‘Count’?

This is something I’ve wondered about before, but never pursued much: Do links from PDF’s count towards link popularity?

I can’t say that I know for certain. I do know that Google often caches an HTML version of a PDF document, converting URLs and links within to normal HTML links–so, my guess would be, that links from PDFs do count.

The question was asked at High Rankings in Worthy Links In Readable Documents, Links in PDF’s:

If a client produces numerous PDF Fact sheets that are available for download from their site will links to URLs in the PDF’s have any weight when it comes to link popularity?

xScottx replies with some good, hard evidence:

…when searching for backlinks in Google for some sites, PDFs sometimes show up….so it seems that the links in PDFs do count for link popularity.

And fathom seems to agree. Does anyone know for sure, either way? Feedback appreciated…

Posted on Jul 8, 2005 by in Text Link Ads News
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Comments

Submitted by Todd on Jul 8, 2005 3:37 pm
I remember Bruce Clay commenting at one of the conferences on pdf's NOT being filtered by one of the "link value" filtering technologies. In that particular instance, a pdf link was potentially MORE valuable than a regular link.

Short answer: yes, it's valuable.

Long answer: Worth more research to see if it's MORE valuable in instances.
Submitted by Andy Hagans on Jul 8, 2005 3:40 pm
MORE valuable eh? vewwy intewesting....
Submitted by graywolf on Jul 8, 2005 4:19 pm
I have had PDF's show up as backlinks in Google. One time it was from local government site.
Submitted by Andy Hagans on Jul 8, 2005 5:22 pm
Good to know... even more evidence that they do indeed count!

Now I just need to publish a PDF sometime. :-)
Submitted by assparade on Jul 8, 2005 5:34 pm
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Submitted by aaron wall on Jul 9, 2005 2:22 pm
I think PDFs, if anything, should be given more weighting because they usually take more time and effort to create than the average web page.

Additionally URL mentions in .txt files can also show up as linkage data in some search engines.
Submitted by Andy Hagans on Jul 10, 2005 3:06 pm
URLs in TXT docs show up as backlinks? In which engines?
Submitted by aaron wall on Jul 13, 2005 5:19 am
>URLs in TXT docs show up as backlinks? In which engines?

have not looked in a bit...but think I saw some in Google a while back.