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Okay, fair enough, but I have 140 pages in subfolders that link back to the main page so it would be nice if Google were to include these when calculating my PR rating as that would constitute another 140 incoming links. This isn't happening as my pages in subfolders only have a PR3 rating which Google obviously doesn't include in its calculations.
So, my question is would I have to increase my main pages PR to 6 in order to get pages in subfolders to hence be displayed as a PR4? Obviously I could move all these files into the root folder which should make them then all PR4 but this would take a lot of effort and also would make site maintenance quite laborious. Is there anyway to encourage Google to give these pages in subfolders a PR rating closer to the main page or is this just one of Googles quirks?
I hope I'm making sense but I fear that I may just be babbling!
Kind Regards
Chris Holgate
I am no expert in this area, but it is my understanding that any interlinking in your site results in redistribution of PRs and nothing more. There are a few nice algorithms and codes available on the web for calculating PRs of all your pages.
Moving the pages to the root directory is not going to help you. PRs will remain exactly the same. Instead, you have to do two things:
1. Try to get incoming links from other sites - that only will increase your PR.
2. To increase the PR of a page (meaning PR of one or more other pages will have to be decreased) link in a desired manner - i.e. link from higher PR page and more links.
Also, since Google rounds off the PR values to integers, there is a misconception that PR goes down by 1 for each level change. If one tries to have 10,000 pages being linked by a single index page of PR6, each of those 10,000 pages will most likely have PR of 1 or 2.
it would be nice if Google were to include these when calculating my PR rating as that would constitute another 140 incoming links
If Google counted your own internal pages as incoming links which should add to your PR then your PR would increase with every update?
e.g. Today you have a PR 6.0 site, every internal link below has a PR6.0 - (PR6.0 x weighting factor x page depth). Each of those links add to the PR6.0 you currently have, making it above PR6.0
Next update you have a home page which is now something over PR6.0, and hence each internal page must also increase. That in turn increases your home page PR for the next update.
Keep this up and your PR increases on its own forever!
Realty check.....it doesn't happen! Internal links don't consistently add to your home pages PR because you would end up in an infinite PR raise game with every update.
Want your PR to increase?...you have to get other external links to achieve it.
your main page already benefits from the backlicks. Every backlink counts. However, Google doesn't show them all for the 'link:' command (but they are included in the calculation).
There are different opinions about the question whether to link to the index page or to the domain www.domain.com (from internal pages) to avoid PR splitting. I haven't had any problem linking to my index page, because Google identifies these two pages a one. However, you might be on the safer side when you use an absolute link.
Also, PR calculation depends on the link structure not on directories or location. To improve the PR of your site (sum of PR over all pages), you have to get more incoming links. Changing the link structure of your site (e.g. from hierarchical to flat) will change the distrubution of PR for the pages on your site while the total amout is the same. By the way, saying ToolbarPR drops by one for pages which are linked from the home page isn't true. PR is calculated according to PR = (1-d) + d * (PR_1/N_1 + PR_2/N2 + .... + PR_i/N_i), where d is a damping factor (about 0.85), PR_1 to PR_i is the PR of the pages linking to that page and N_1 to N_i are the number of links on those pages. Obviously, the number of links play an important role. ToolbarPR is integer on a logarithmic PR scale.
Also, are you sure that the ToolbarPR for your pages is real and not an estimate? (If your page is indexed an backlinks are shown it is real)
If Google counted your own internal pages as incoming links which should add to your PR then your PR would increase with every update?
No it wouldn't.
Internal backlinks count. The PR calculation is done on a page basis, not a site basis. Evey page, including your own, that links to a given page count.
The PR is completely recalculate each month. Your PR las month makes no difference when it comes to this month.
The PR calculation goes through many iterations for every page until they stabilize. To keep the feedback loop from forever increasing your pagerank, a damping factore is added.
I've also found that if I upload the file blahblah.html into my root folder that this also instantly takes on a PR rating of 4. Hence I assumed that if I moved all the pages out of subfolders then a logical assumption would be that these pages would all take on a PR4.
That seems to make sense in my mind.
hmmm, that explains why I have a PR 6 site with 22,000 internal PR 5 pages linked to it and a PR7 site with less than 2,000 links in total pointing to it! (using more accurate ATW, not Google link reporting). Okay, PR7 site has more PR 6 links, but the numbers still don't add up!
I see no evidence that suggests internal links count for sqat as far as PR is concerned. Sub-domains may make a difference.....I'm working on testing that theory, initial evidence does look good though.
If you disagree please explain allinurl:www.amazon.com with 3.5 million reults and amazon.com with a PR 3?
Have you ever read the PR documents? I would consider it required reading before you do the experiments.
If internal links did not count, then most internal pages would have no PR, only those pages that have external links would have PR.
The numbers add up just fine, start counting the links on each of those PR5 pages, I bet there are a lot. And how many of those PR5 pages are in the index and how many have guessed PR.
It all makes a difference.
amazon.com/exec/blahblah/subst/home/home.html/"codemangled"
So you are seeing the pr value of that particular page, not their home page.
BigDave nice tip.
Question about Amazon (and similar sites) is that external links from users around the world would generally be in the form of a link to a particular book or item sold, or at least a link that contains their affiliate ID rather than linking directly to www.amazon.com
So how come their home page gets PR9 when most links don't go to that page?
These pages in my root directory only have one link going to them which by itself would not warrant it gaining a PR4 rating so the fact it is placed in the root directory of my site which is a PR5 must give it a PR4 rating by default.
By moving all my pages from subfolders into the main folder then I would gain a higher PR for all my files that were in subfolders (theoretically) which would result in the 100's of files on this domain getting better search results.
Am I getting completely the wrong end of the stick here?
