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Firstly, when passing out the pagerank will google include the excluded pages, reducing the amount allocated to the indexed pages?
Secondly, should I care? All the internal pages seem to wind up with a pr of one less than the home page anyway.
2. If you don't care about those pages having PR, then it shouldn't matter. However, you may consider not linking out to those pages that won't be indexed, or linking to them using javascript, so that the PR value may be increased for the pages that you do want indexed.
Yes, you are right that usually they are one less than the index, but this isn't always the case and ther are ways around that.
I've been thinking about using javascript but as many of the links in question have important keywords in them that brings up a whole new question:
Would the anchor text of a javascript link be as effective as that of a standard link at increasing ranking?
ie Is it the presence of the <a tag that makes it a link, or the ability of the spider to follow it?
I am guessing it is the former, but you can never tell with spiders.
Amanda, I'm not sure what you mean about Javascript links being as effective at increasing ranking as standard links. If the Javascript hides the link from Google then there is no anchor text.
Take the following link
<a href="index.htm" onClick="golink('parent','index.asp');return false">Link Text</a>
This is essentially a standard text link to index.htm, but actually is a link to index.asp (assuming the browser supports javascript).
I would assume that google will see it as text link and assign the appropriate weight to the link text, as well as following the link to index.htm.
Am I right here?
Good question. I don't use Javascript links so I've never run tests on them. I don't remember coming across spam using the method that you describe so I guess there's a good chance that Google don't filter out href links with an onClick attribute.
Does anyone here know of a page where they could test the idea? (No urls please, but it would be great if someone could check to see if it counts as a backlink)
Either way, I would be wary of that approach if it might look like spam to a human reviewer.
There is a legitimate reason for including the href attribute, without it the cursor doesn't change to a hand when you move over the link and this will confuse many visitors.
Also, the page in the href attribute is one level above the actual page in the nav structure, hence it enables visitors with non js browsers to navigate the site.
I guess the problem would be that the js and href urls are different, but as this in itself wouldn't actually do anything to increase pr or rankings, what would they have to complain about?
Aside from preserving pr the only seo benefit to including the href attribute is to have the link text recognised, provided the text is genuine (and it is - we are talking product categories - the fact that the cat names are also keywords is just a happy coincidence) then surely this would help the robot to correctly assess the page and hence help the searcher - right?
Perhaps I am being a little too idealistic here?
I think not. Usability improvements ought not be penalised.
I would very much hope that the usage you describe wouldn't upset a human reviewer.
Cheers ikbenhet1
