Estimated PR for new pages?

Directory structure affects the estimated PR...

[FleaPit]

Not sure if anyone has noticed this before but it just came to my attention :) I knew that Google gave an instant estimated PR (according to the toolbar) for a new uploaded page based on the PR of the homepage. OK I know this isn't an actual PR because the page hasn't actually been crawled or indexed. However, what I have noticed is if the page is in the top level directory i.e. widgets.com/redwidgets.html, it gets one less PR than the homepage. If it is in a second level directory e.g. widgets.com/colours/redwidgets.html then it gets two less PR than the homepage. This process is repeated until you hit PR0.

I always thought PR was distributed based on the linking structure not directory structure. Is this just a new page/toolbar anomaly or does directory structure actually affect internal PR distribution when fully indexed?

[Bobby_Davro]

I think that it is a case of following the normal pattern to guess the PR. If Google is guessing the PR for a page, then it doesn't know how the page fits into the structure... so it is impossible to factor that in.

However, on many sites, the PR does drop off by one for each level, so this is a fairly accurate way of estimating.

Normally, PR is indeed calculated according to the internal and external linking.

[heini]

>Is this just a new page/toolbar anomaly or does directory structure actually affect internal PR distribution when fully indexed?

The directory structure has no direct influence on the PR distribution.
You can bury a page like 5 levels deep. Give it a link from the index page and it will have the same amount as a page on the same level as the homepage with the same link coming in.
Such a site structure just normally doesn't happen so.

[FleaPit]

Does anyone have any url's which demonstrate this in simple fashion?

[heini]

Sorry, Fleapit, we don't do urls. Which part is unclear? I think everybody would be more than willing to help!