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Thanks,
-Russell
However, in principle outgoing links can also improve your ranking although the PR is lowered.
Also, I wouldn't see just the PR aspect. Probably, I would build a separate article page with those links on it (but not using JavaScript).
<a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://www.url.com/');"><img src="images/gif.gif" alt="" width="232" height="77" border="0" /></a>
Edited: Or simply: Yes
(I saw the repply too late.)
The value of the outgoing link to the recipient is diluted by the number of links out on the page but I never heard that you could lose PR by legit external links. Am I mistaken on this?
Adding another layer the user must traverse makes the site less enjoyable to the user. I've visited some sites where you can't get anywhere in less than 5 pages. I, for one, prefer to not use such sites.
It's important to keep the big picture, your visitors, in mind when adding layers of complexity.
As for not losing the visitor to the other site, why not open the link in a new broswer?
-GT
There is loss. PR is transferred to all the pages you link to. If you link off your site you are reducing the amount of PR that gets transferred to the rest of your site.
PR is affected by outgoing links. Neglecting dead ends for simplicity, the average PR (not Toolbar PR) is one. Therefore, if a site increase its PR through incoming links there must be a decrease somewhere else.
Of course, any link will affect PR - not only the PR of the page where the links appear, but also the other pages.
Half true. Outgoing links do not affect the PR of the page on which they appear. The only affect might be a decrease in the PR that can be passed by links to internal pages.
If you are just focusing on PR then all outgoing links are bad, because they will decrease it.
Also only half true as per first reason above.
If these pages have a link back to your page, then the decrease of your page is slightly lower (depending on the number of links on the page back linking to you).
No decrease to PR of your page. Any positive effect depends on the PR of your page, the PR of the linkback page and number of links per page. If your PR3 home page is exchanging links with a PR7 page you just might come out way ahead.
You should also keep in mind other things besides PR:
--A good keyword rich external text link might help you in the search algo
--Is the site being linked to an authority? Can these links make your site more of an 'authority hub?'
It ain't all PR and it's just my 2 cents...
Jim
Yup, but it all depends on *your* users. Some people might like to link right over to the articles, but as a visitor to your site, I want to stay there. I wouldn't have come otherwise. If you can give me a summary I only have to leave if the article is about something that really interests me. Plus, I can easily read the other summaries and and still be on your site.
Good advice!
[webmasterworld.com...]
as long as the page on which the outgoing links appear have any link to the rest of the site (that is nearly always the case), also the PR of this page decreases (while the relation of the PR of your pages is unchanged). So outgoing links decrease the PR of all pages on your site (assuming for simplicity that there are no dead ends).
And, of course, there is also a decrease in the PR if I link to a page which contains a backlink to my page compared to the situation where I don't link to that page, but there is still a backlink to my page.
as already said, linking to high PR sites will lower your PR, but it can improve your ranking (which is finally the important point).
No. The PR of a page does not decrease because it has external links. A PR4 page with 5 links and a PR4 page with 50 links is still a PR4 page.
The only thing that changes is the PR that each of these PR4 pages can pass to the pages they link to. To keep it simple (without all other stuff such as dampening factors and such):
-- the PR4 page with 5 links can pass 20% of its available PR to each of the pages it links to
-- the PR4 page with 50 links can pass only 2% of its available PR to each of the pages it links to
-- in both cases the PR4 pages stay PR4 pages
Some good late night reading:
WW's Papers relating to the creation of Google [webmasterworld.com] which includes links to:
Anatomy of a Large Scale...Search Engine [www7.scu.edu.au] and Page Rank Citation Ranking... [dbpubs.stanford.edu] among many others.
Hate to be pedantic, but these are required reading to?somewhat? understand PR and to avoid a lot of common misconceptions. There are other sources and maybe a couple of folks will have links available for them.
Jim
as I already said, you can easily prove that outgoing links decrease your PR (assuming that the original PageRank calculation is still valid and neglecting dead ends for simplicity):
In this case the average PR of all pages is one. Therefore, if a site increase its PR through incoming links there must be a decrease somewhere else.
Or to make it a little bit simpler for you: the outgoing links decrease the transferred PR of the linking page to the rest of your site. Therefore, the PR of the other pages decreases and therefore the PR of the linking site decreases. Also, the decrease is (slightly) higher if you link to 50 sites compared to linking to 5 sites.
I have no problem if someone is pedantic, but at least you have to be right.
Do you have some real examples that we can look at along witth the papers?
Before you were saying that the PR of the page on which the links appeared on decreased. You're now changing what you're saying to be more correct.
Therefore, if a site increase its PR through incoming links there must be a decrease somewhere else.
Yep. But keep in mind that it is PageRank, not site rank. One page gains PR, one page loses. The pages can be on your site or somebody elses.
the outgoing links decrease the transferred PR of the linking page to the rest of your site
That's about right. The amount of available PR transferred to each page decreases with the number of links on a page whether these links are to internal or external pages. So, if you currently have links from your home page to 4 internal pages and then add a link to an external page you will be decreasing the transfer of PR to your internal pages from 25% to 20%. The PR of the home page stays the same and always will.
Therefore, the PR of the other pages decreases and therefore the PR of the linking site decreases.
The first part somewhat yes, as above. The second part no. A pages PR does not decrease because it has external links.
Also, the decrease is (slightly) higher if you link to 50 sites compared to linking to 5 sites.
In this case the PR available to be transferred to each page has been reduced by a factor of ten.
depthcharge,
Do you have some real examples that we can look at along with the papers?
Real examples? I don't know if such a thing exists except for just about every page on the web. Maybe one of the folks who really know will be able to come up with something.
Jim
there is no inconsistence in that what I'm saying. The PR of the linking page decreases as well as the rest of the site (assuming a 'normal' linking structure). However, I didn't say that the increase of the other site is totally compensated by a decrease of that domain - other domains/pages are affected (depending on the linking structure of the rest of the world).
Of course, a page doesn't decrease directly because of external links (I never said this), but it decreases. The PR of the homepage will not stay the same (in the example you mentioned), since the PR transferred from the 4 internal pages to the homepage (as said I'm not considering any kind of dead ends) decreases.
Think of the following situation (as before assuming that the original PageRank calculation is still valid and neglecting dead ends for simplicity):
I add a link to the other 3 billion pages (every page except those on my domain) on my link page. The rest of the internet is unchanged. Of course, there is a little but finite PR transferred from my link page to the rest of the world. How should the average PR stay unchanged, if the PR on my domain is still the same?
What will happen is that the PR of my linking page will decrease. Of course, other pages (not necessarily only on my domain) will also decrease.
"Assuming a normal linking structure" I'll concede the first point.
This is just nonsense. Have a page called "links" which you link to from your PR6 main page. You have thirty links to various pages on your site from your main page. This links page becomes PR5. You can then either:
1) link back to your main page (aiming one PR5 link at your PR6 main page), or
2) link to forty pages from this link page and get forty PR5 (or PR6 or PR4 or whatever) links aiming at your main page.
Sensible outgoing links are a key to increasing PR.
I was talking about external links (unfortunately I called these outgoing links - sorry for that).
That one can improve the PR of the main page by adding internal links is obvious.
Also, the main effect (assuming that the incoming PR is relatively high) is already reached by adding one page with a backlink. This yields a factor 1/(1-d^2) for the main page, where d denotes the damping factor. (I know this, but this was not the topic of this discussion.)
Also, adding thirty links to a PR6 will lead in most of the cases just to PR4. But as already said, the main benefit is already reached by adding just one page.
Please, next time use the word "nonsense" more carefully.
