The problem is, backlinking's overall effect is hard to figure out.
I have 3 sites that rank very, very high and have virtually no
backlinks. That is, under 5 each. But the links they have are on
sites that are very cool with google.

I think certain backlinks, especially blog commenting, will eventually
be a non-item. That is, completely ignored.

Which leads to forum sigs as backlinks. I see no trend to discount
those.

Because so much has been emphasized, right or wrong, about
backlinks, it seems everybody and their brother has a system
for getting literally tons of backlinks. And google is probably working
on a way to eliminate the effectiveness of these "systems" and
originating backlinks.

Just on a personal level, I see more people wanting to either buy
a link on your page, or trade links. If you have high PR sites, you
probably have experienced the same. I think overall, people are leaning
toward getting links on sites that google loves. Even if this means
having fewer total backlinks.

Paul

hmm.. if its happen it will be a disaster for us who using 'that' method to gain backlinks..
im actually quite worried about all this thing.. but if google really take action to eliminate this, so how many strategy left to do backlinks? i mean a white hat BL method..

In the furture, you need to pay more attention to link diversity and deep link. Google is more smart. Old simple links does not work so well. Link diversity and deep link are very important.

Just start planning now and trying to think of alternatives that aren't used as widely.

We all know it's dirt cheap to outsource a few hundred backlinks that'll be dropped on vBulletin and expressionengine sites.

so one might assume that one day those platforms might be nuked by the developers or google.

What is something that is less often outsourced and not as abused... those wonderful 2.0 sites that offer personal member blogs.

yeah, some people are using them for IM purposes but most of the time it's just a list of links.

so why not throw in your spun article with those links... make it a legit content relevant page that links back to your site.

more work.. yeah. will it make any difference, I dunno. It's just an option and one of many alternatives that might save your site if and/or when the profile backlink days come to an end.

I'm not saying the sky is falling or that these backlinks will every stop working but it's always a good idea to be forward thinking and keeping a step ahead of the current trends.

Hell, you could write a WSO out of it and be the next backlinks savior.

Future of backlinking is I think it will be dead. I mean it will be dead for manually adding them. People will have to pay for links and advertising, plain and simple.

Google really makes no sense. They added this no-follow attribute, now it's harder to create backlinks. Almost impossible to get really good ones, it's getting harder and harder for the small businessman. I don't care what any webmaster says.

But then Google says no one is allowed to buy links. I laugh at this, do we have a choice if there's no way to manually add them? You know a lot of the big sites have paid for links and advertising, plain and simple. They definitely paid for some SEO expert to help them.

I don't like they way Google is headed, with their privatized search and their no-follow attributed. I think those two factors have just cut out the lowerclass with small sites.

Seems to me everythings turning into a monopoly. All we will have left in this country and other countries is big company websites to visit and big company websites to buy from.

It's already happened to the real world(for instance Wallmart), just a matter of time when it happens to the web.