tedster - 3:26 am on Jul 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

In both cases I reported above, the cross-linking from the satellite domains is run-of-site and in the template. The core domain uses only links from the content area of relevant pages.

So even though the cross-links are in the main content area of the powerhouse core domain (some even on the Home Page) they don't seem to be having much effect any more, not the way they once did. My gut feeling is I could drop the links and see only minimal effect on the satellite domains' PR or rankings. However, the lnks are there for users, so I won't do that experiment.

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It seems to me, theoretically, that changing PR calculation would be a good place to hit some factors at the "starting gate". That way they don't even need anything more built into the query-dependent part of the ranking/relevance algo.

So when it comes to controlled testing going forward, I'd like to zero in on exactly what factors to test for. The five I mentioned in the opening post are what comes to mind, but I'm still looking for more ideas. It also seems like a good time to test, since we have PR data as fresh as we'll ever get, and we have maybe three months before the next export of PR data to the toolbar.