Are forum signatures any value at all for search engines referral links, etc?

[Jeff]

On the old vbulletin 2.x the postbit had links (www) that went to every poster's homepage - now they're in the javascript dropdown. Some forums allow signatures to contain links, while others do not. Do these signature/postbit/profile links have any value at all to search engine positioning, page rank, referral, etc.?

[georgeek]

Links from the internal pages of forums are heavily discounted by the major search engines. For ranking purposes link quality is an important factor and a few high quality inbound links are worth more than hundreds of signature links.

However signature links can sometimes provide targeted traffic if they are appropriate to the forum.

- George

[Randall]

Links from the internal pages of forums are heavily discounted by the major search engines. For ranking purposes link quality is an important factor and a few high quality inbound links are worth more than hundreds of signature links.

Somehow my so-called web site has managed to stay near the top for "randall blank" in Google. It's even been known to grab the #1 spot from time to time -- as it is right now at MSN -- but as far as I know there's only one link to it outside these forums. And it's not even in my sig, though I do wonder if my archived email at Gmail has anything to do with it. I don't link to the site (why would I?), but the domain name is there.

Postings like this one may give me a boost for a while, but it's still self-referential gobbledygook.

On the other hand, Google only shows 573 hits (even less at MSN), so the competition isn't all that fierce...

Randall