robots.txt and outgoing links

[ladylil]

HELP! I manage a local portal site which has been consistently in the top five for our chosen keywords for the last 3 years. now all of a sudden, with no major changes, the site's dropped out of the top 30!

This is a framed site, with links to outside sites in the left frame.

If, as I'm assuming, I have too many outgoing links to garner a good PR, then would excluding the link lists using robots.txt be recommended?

Would Google penalize me for this?

p.s. - I'm on a mac, so it's difficult for me to figure out PR's of my site AND all the sites I am linking to.

[jdMorgan]

ladylil,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

> This is a framed site, with links to outside sites in the left frame.
> If, as I'm assuming, I have too many outgoing links to garner a good PR, then would excluding the link
> lists using robots.txt be recommended?

You can't exclude external links with robots.txt - it controls indexing only of pages internal to the site.

> Would Google penalize me for this?

No. Not for having too many links out, and as stated, you can't use robots.txt to do what you describe, so it can't be penalized.

You could tell Google not to index the frame that contains your outgoing links, as long as it contains only outgoing links.

> p.s. - I'm on a mac, so it's difficult for me to figure out PR's of my site AND all the sites I am linking to.

Buy a two-year-old used PC? This is a business expense, and so may be deductible. :)

If you are reacting to this latest (and on-going) update, don't. Wait 'til it settles, then decide what you need to do. Over time, it is the search engines' goal to reward sites that are the most useful to their visitors. While using good optimization techniques, never lose sight of that fact. Trying to manage your PR by denying it to the sites you link to makes your site less valuable to those sites, and therefore, less valuable to the Web. I'd advise you to concentrate on getting more PR, rather than denying it to the sites you link to. (If your business model involves having local business sites buy links from you, then denying PR to them could backfire on you seriously).

Also, you've said it's a framed site. Make sure you're using the <noframes> sections to advantage. PR is not everything! Some very good advice [webmasterworld.com].

Jim

<added> ...and see this recent thread [webmasterworld.com], too. </added>