Are site wide links bad for web developers?

[2Stroke]

Like many web dev companies, we put an anchor text credit (varying the anchor text) in the footer of clients' sites. As it's a footer link, it's site wide.

This strategy's been troubling me for a while and I've been anticipating a drop in our rankings ... especially in light of Penguin. But it hasn't happened.

Any other developers our there taken a hit by having site wide links? anyone have any views on this? Anyone want to comment on the spurious and unlikely scenario that Google may recognise that web dev companies have always used site wide credits and may therefore be overlooking / not penalising them?

[EvolveCreative]

We've gotten new business from our signature links. Just use a nofollow tag and you'll be within guidelines. The link is there to get new customers. Not increase search rankings. It doesn't make sense to remove the link. Doing so would be a bad user experience.

[EGOL]

Yes, straight links, "in theory" should be ok.

But speaking from the perspective of the website owner, you will never find one of my sites with sitewide links to web devs.... and especially not to SEOs or hosting providers.

I think that it will do nothing at all that is positive for my site.

[Host1]

Straight links should in theory be good though? (Like the following as a example: "Hosted by "Wehostthissite ?

[EGOL]

Artists have always signed their work.  It is a good thing to do for many reasons and it benefits people beyond the artist.

Web devs continued the tradition of signing their work when they built the first websites for others.

However, when they realized that a link might help their rankings they stopped signing and began linking.  Some might have linked their signatures prior to that, just to make it easy for people to visit their websites.

When they realized that keyword anchor text might also be beneficial for search engine rankings they stopped linking their signatures and began linking their keywords.

In an honest assessment, any thoughtful person should conclude that keyword links are done for manipulation.  Linked signatures might not be manipulative, but some probably are.

I am not a web dev but if I was I wouldn't be linking my keywords.

[Host1]

I have no good answer here, but i would like one.

However: I can say that i haven't noticed any negative effect myself on one site where we have quite a bit of site-wide links on other sites due to the site owners giving us a small link in the header/footer. Seeing that this definately is "legit" links i would hope that there should be no negative changes due to this.