will leaving 1 orphaned page hurt?

[jlyons1234]

will leaving 1 orphaned page hurt? I have 50 pages and they all point back to my index.html but i have 1 page that I cant point to index.html. will i be penalized for this?

thanks,
jay

[rfgdxm1]

No. And, is this really an orphaned page? The definition of an orphan page is one that has no current links to it at all.

[Stefan]

Not likely, jlyons. If you're at all concerned, link it back to some other page... it doesn't have to go to the index. Link it to one of my pages if you want... :-)

[egomaniac]

Orphan pages are not a problem at all. Duplicate content is a problem, but "floating" unlinked orphans are fine, though a bit lonely :)

[jlyons1234]

when you say duplicate content what do you mean, i have a catalog page where each page table is the same, just diffrent pictures and text, this is ok. right?

jay

[John_Creed]

Yes, if it has different text, that is ok.

[bignet]

a client site used to have links pointing to
www.example.org/index.html
as well as
www.example.org

I changed all links to www.example.org but google still lists the index.html page if I search site using repeat the search with the omitted results included - perhaps it needs more time.

As far as I can tell site not being penalised

[Net_Wizard]

No, I have an orphaned page, no link from my site, none whatsoever.

I've used this page to demonstrate a technical solution to a question on another forum I frequent...nothing to do with my site, hence it's orphan.

One backlink, according to Google, coming from that forum page. Weird though, the PR of this page still benefit from my site even though there's no link to it and much higher than the PR of the external page linking to it.

[topr8]

the PR of this page still benefit from my site even though there's no link to it and much higher than the PR of the external page linking to it.

sorry this is impossible, the pr you are seeing is not the real pr of the page, probably just a toolbar estimate.

orphan page ... just to clear this up, as has been mentioned twice already in this thread, an orphan page is a page with no inbound links (hence the orphan metaphor) it does not matter if the links are internal or external. also if the orphan page has outgoing links it is still an orphan page

[jlyons1234]

Thanks alot all!

Jay

[Net_Wizard]

well, I beg to differ to your opinion, but in my limited vocabulary...an orphan page refers to the page within the site and not to its status in the internet.

If your definition is correct then how the heck can Google see a page if it is not link from anywhere?

And to toolbar guessing the PR maybe so and maybe not. How would you know that it is guessing?

As I type this response the toolbar is showing PR0. If the toolbar have guessed then is it not that there should be some sort of guesstimate to the PR of the page where I am now, basing on the webmasterworld index PR? Even just PR1?

[Net_Wizard]

or how about this?

A site was created a few days ago...1 page...no inbound link internal or external, no outbound link either.

It's already in the Google index with fresh cache, with PR and already doing well in some non-competitive keywords.

Care to explain how did that happen? :)

[jocelynd]

Does the page have Adsence?
If so, as soon as it's loaded once, it will soon be crawled... to determine the ads to display... may be part of the reason.

[Net_Wizard]

nope...no adsense

just created it a few days ago.

Really neat though because I have something to analyze why it is ranking good on some terms against sites that have backlinks, it even beat a PR6 site on the same term. :)

[jlyons1234]

so orpahaned pages dont really matter much then, right?

jay