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Remember what Google's PR is based on: "The uniquely demoractic nature of the web". Well, if a page is really worthwhile, it should have at least 15(?) or 20 (?) inbound links. No?
That would pretty much keep new sites from ever being developed. A site has to actually reside on the server and be accessible to the public before people start linking to it. I visit two sites on a daily basis that have 5 inbound links. But, the wealth of maths knowledge there far surpasses anything else I've found on the web in this particular area.
Links have no bearing on whether a site is worthwhile or not, links indicate popularity, in some instances they only indicate that someone had enough cash to buy them.
Added: good point digitalhost. How could new sites build links with this idea?
[edited by: Chicago at 11:58 pm (utc) on May 8, 2003]
I run a real estate site. You can see every property listed in the mls. People come to this site to find homes. The number of incoming links has nothing to do with the information found.
I have gone from 5 important inbound links that provide quality traffic to 60+ from other real estate sites, but only because I'll drop off the 1st page otherwise.
These links are for one purpose only - PR. They do not increase or decrease the importance or value of the content, nor do they enhance the experience for the user.
How in the world does this have anything to do with how good a web site is?
mosley700, >> if it is good they will link.
This is the position of the idealist SEO. And they are out there. In the real world, Kirby sets forth the ultimate contradiction.
People will link because they have to beat their competitors. They must or they will lose. Being good is as important to this equation as the PR of the site you are trying to recipricate.
[edited by: Chicago at 12:08 am (utc) on May 9, 2003]
You need 20 links to show up in SERPS, but you need to show up in SERPS in order to get links.
All you would accomplish by implementing such an algo is increase the amount of artifical linking in your database. All the sites that had less than 20 links would just ban together and create new-site link farms.
Artificial linking is not the kind of linking that helps Google. What they want to encourage is the natural process that existed before they came along. In order to do that, you need to make it easier for new sites to be found, not harder.
You need 20 links to show up in SERPS, but you need to show up in SERPS in order to get links.
Whenever I finish a site, and sometimes while I still have a page or two un-finished, I go out and ask for links from related-topic sites.
And, a lot of sites get links for other things than PR. The majority of traffic to one of my sites is from (member) links.
There are quite a few topic that don't have very many related sites. 15 or 20 sites linking is a ridiculously high number in many cases.
With a grain of salt... there is nothing like linking to a site with no PR! or with unknown or questionable tactics as they may relate to future Internet optimization activity.
Your organic. You go. If it works for you, run with it. You see... we all have no choice but to go after PR. It in and of itself isn't a bad thing- it is "natural" and "democratic". It amongst blood thirsty 10 default Page 1 listing G SERPs is just the next tactic to abuse. And abused it will be - whilst relevancy again takes a back seat. You see(2)... when it is an algo at work there is only so much to look at to tell the truth about something and on-site optimization isn't enough any more- off-site we go! But when it comes to human editors....everything changes and relevancy doesnt have to be a correlary of PR. (hence the weight of Dmoz and Y!Directory in the GPRalgo)
Algo's will live by the sword and die by the sword, as will human editors. Those who make the most profit will just live longer...or more bright:)
[edited by: Chicago at 1:43 am (utc) on May 9, 2003]
How will you respond to those people that turn down your request for a link by replying, "Sorry, but I only link to worthwhile sites, you know, sites that have at least 15 to 20 links, and yours doesn't. In fact, your site has no links, therefore it must be worthless."
How will you respond to those people that turn down your request for a link by replying, "Sorry, but I only link to worthwhile sites, you know, sites that have at least 15 to 20 links, and yours doesn't. In fact, your site has no links, therefore it must be worthless."
Most people actually check out a site when deciding to link to it or not. If my content is not up to par, I hope they don't link to it. It usually is up to par, and I've had fairly good success with link requests.
digitalghost, if somebody ran a site with great content, and no inbound links, you would refuse to link for that reason alone? Seems pretty shallow. :/
<snip> ;) My position is that that the number of links aren't a good indicator of the value of the content. I stated that in my first post in this thread.
What you seem to be saying is unless a site has 15-20 links the content isn't "worthwhile" and Google should drop those sites from the index. Please pick a side of the fence to debate from.
If they then go to look at search engines for more of the same idea (they don't know it's a brand new idea) wouldn't it be odd if they couldn't find my site.
If Google dropped all the pages with less than 5 (or 10, or 15... or 20) inbound links, I bet that Google's SERPs would be pretty clean.
Yes, they'd be so clean that home pages would be the only pages in the index.
But isn't that what PR is for?
It will be interesting to see how much links count in the coming months. I'm guessing that link importance is greatly reduced.
Sounds computationally difficult to me.
>But isn't that what PR is for?
Right. Basically, following his logic the PR weight in the algo should be greatly increased. If this were done, the sites he considers would be pushed down the SERPs. Google however has been moving in the direction of lowering the weight of PR of late. According to a post by Googleguy some months back, done to combat PR for sale.
It would still lead to the same problem we have today. The one with the most links wins.
We saw evidence of this last update with a trend of lower PR.
Never mind. I got it!
[edited by: Kirby at 5:08 am (utc) on May 9, 2003]
PR is being sold? make it worth less.
Once you find some other way to combat it, or it isn't as much of a problem anymore, you can kick it back up while you deal with a different set of issues.
I agree.
Question- What would happen if G just counted links from relevant sites without regard to PR?
And, how does Google determine which sites are relevant? There are ways to try and do this, but any attempt will have the problem of lots of errors.
