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I have worked on a few blogs for several years and have treated them as a creative outlet. Haven't been concerned about getting followers or traffic.

Presently, the "Blogroll" section of my blog is empty. However, I am now considering adding several URLs to this section. I don't plan to follow these other blogs everyday; I want to treat this section of my blog as a convenient online bookmarking service for myself (instead of saving a collection of links in, say, a text file).

I am now wondering, by linking to another person's blog, do they automatically receive notification that somebody has linked to them? Or does that only happen if I subscribe to their RSS feed?

I don't expect the other bloggers to link to me, but it would be a nice bonus. And I don't plan to initiate contact with the other bloggers to make a link-back request.

So ... my question is: does having a Blogroll result in any benefits to a blogger, other than creating a convenient collection of links, so that everything is one click away?

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I am now wondering, by linking to another person's blog, do they automatically receive notification that somebody has linked to them?

No, they don't, but if they happen to be using Google Webmaster Tools, they can figure out who links to them.

Or does that only happen if I subscribe to their RSS feed?

Unless they are using Feedburner, they typically don't know if people are subscribing to their RSS feeds.

So ... my question is: does having a Blogroll result in any benefits to a blogger, other than creating a convenient collection of links, so that everything is one click away?

The benefit to you is that you have your links conveniently there. The benefit to your readers is that they can see what other blogs you find interesting, and give them something else to explore. The benefit to the owner of the blog you're linking to is that they may receive some traffic from your readers, and there is a little search engine optimization benefit in that your link to them is considered by Google as an endorsement of sorts. The concept behind Google's search algorithm is that when sites link to each other, they are "endorsing" the other site. The more links, and the higher quality and bigger the sites giving the endorsement are, the higher the recipient sites will rank.

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