Deep cat, small PR?

Can DMOZ category influence PageRank?

[helleborine]

Using Google's directory (that shows PageRank) I am noticing that sites that are listed in shallow categories, even dinky sites with little or no links, have surprisingly large PR, while more important sites listed in deep categories, but with well-developped links seem to have unfairly low PR.

Have you noticed this as well, is it my imagination?

[rfgdxm1]

? What counts for Google PR is the PR of the cat, and number of links on that page. If you are seeing sites in high PR Google cats that have few sites listed, and these sites have high PR, this is exactly as it should be.

[jtbell]

The top-level DMOZ page has a very high PR because lots of other pages link to it. It spreads some of that PR down to the second-level categories that it links to. The second-level cats in turn spread some of their PR down to the third-level cats, and so on. Therefore, DMOZ pages tend to have lower and lower PR, the further you descend into the directory structure.

If a site relies on its DMOZ listing for most of its PR, it in turn will have a lower PR than the category page that it's listed on. How much lower, depends on how many listings (links) are in that cat.

[helleborine]

True; the effect appears to be disproportionately large, though!

[disgust]

how deep you are in dmoz (or, in other words, what PR your category is) DOES matter.

not for direct PR transfer, though.

why? thousands and thousands and thousands of sites use dmoz content. most of these sites- even though they link to you- will never have any pages that show up in google.

the higher up your category, the more likely your link will show in "smaller" dmoz clones.