Link Popularity through Banners

"How do search engines work with a banner? Will links to my site from banners on other sites help my search engine ranking? A banner is basically an image. How does spider process this information to evaluate my site?" -- Dailton Felipini, Brazil

If the link is to a URL with your domain name, it should help link popularity. I don't think search engines make much distinguish between banners and text links. However, be aware of two situations that would affect link popularity. (1) URLs for banners that are served by third party ad servers may not go to your domain directly, but through a redirect link on another site that counts the click-through. (2) Affiliate program banners and links often go to the affiliate program site to place a cookie and are then redirected to your site. So long as the banner is directly linked to a URL on your domain you should be okay. Affiliate management software programs with URLs that point to the owner's site include Ultimate Affiliate Package (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/groundbreak.htm) and Little Salesman (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/little_salesman.htm).