Do forum links help PageRank and SERPS?

[SEREP]

The Search Engine Reverse Engineering Project is conducting a test to answer two questions:

• Do forum message body links help PageRank and SERPS?
  
• Do forum signature links help PageRank and SERPS?
  
  This post is part of that test.
  
  This post will contain two links, one in the message body and another in the message signature.
  
  Each of these links will contain a unique string of anchor text which will be linked to web pages with no other inbound links.
  
  Using this testing methology, we hope to be able to provide scientifically valid answers to these two questions.
  
  For a full description of our testing methodology, please visit the links above.
  
  Thank you for your participation in our study!
  
  Message Body Test Link: AISEFForumMessageBody
  
  

[Hope]

Will you be providing this information free to the public?

[SEREP]

That's a great question, and one I should have addressed in my initial post.

I will post the results at each of the web forums participating in the test.

In addition, the results will be online at the Search Engine Reverse Engineering Project pages for anyone to validate.

[Hope]

Thank you for providing the information. I hope it proves as useful as we all would like it to. I know that i have seen some benefits from signatures in forums, but only if they are related to the topic of my site (ex: seo forums help seo sites, music forums help music sites,  but seo forums don't help music sites).

[spherica]

Funny you posted this. I have started a similar project.

A little more nonchalont, though.

The problem with posting these kind of things in the forums and then actually showing what you are doing, some idiot comes along, and starts to link to these pages just to discredit your results. Have to take care, and really watch where the links are coming from, and at all times.

[SEREP]

Searching on Google for the unique string in the message body returns 18 results, none of which are the target page.

Searching on Google for the unique string in the message signature returns 7 results, none of which are the target page.

It's still too early for conclusive results, but it doesn't look good for building relevance by posting in web forums.

[12noon]

Can't wait to read more about this as you get more results.

[Hope]

You will really need to wait a few months to see if this really makes a difference.

[Dnyarri]

I get inbound links from forums that show up in google all the time. Don't know if it helps overall, but it doesn't hurt.