Marcia - 10:32 am on May 19, 2002 (gmt 0)

Very interesting topic. I'm working on a site now that's got several outbound links on each and every page in the site - a minimum of 5 or 6 on each, and many, many on the links page. And ten outbound links on the main page. It's PR5 with many inbound good links and the internal pages are PR4. That'll be changing.

But aside from Google, a bit off-topic but something else to consider - other search engines. I've just been checking FAST, and on one site of my own (which does just fine with Google), the ONLY page on the site doing half-way decent with FAST is the only one on the site that has outbound links, about 10 of them. And the phrase it's ranking there for is used on the page, and is related to several of the sites linked out to, so it's in link text. I've seen this happen before, a while back.

In re-thinking internal and outbound linking, I'll consider the context of the pages the outbound links are located on in relation to the sites they're linking to, including the link text I use - which actually increases relevancy to the user imho (or am I kidding myself?). I'll make sure the outbound links are on pages that relate to the sites they're linking to, so even though PR is going out, there's some type of value staying on the site - like relevant content.

I've never liked doing links at all, and have always been very mingy with them, which I'm now glad for since so far I've managed to stay out of trouble. But there's more to consider than just Page Rank. It may be the most important thing, but it's not the whole picture. I still won't exchange links strictly for PR, I'm looking for some that actually add value by adding them to sites.

I have to admit I hate the whole links thing, I'd rather just put together small sites and never bother with any links at all, unless it's specifically a resource type site. So the thought of limiting them is actually comforting to me, not just for keeping PR.