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Now I can see the backlink from the pagerank 8 site. I have been able to see it for 2 months, but our pagerank hasn't changed an iota. All our SERPs positions are identical to before we took up the link.
The link is straight html, and the site is definately not selling pagerank. They are highly reputable and would not be in trouble with Google.
The only things I can guess at are that the text before the link notes that we are sponsoring the page and Google might filter links with advertising related words in their immediate vicinity. The second possibility is that the language of the linking page and my page are not the same. Would Google devalue such links?
I am baffled.
The good news is that if the latter is the case then you probably have no penalty. The bad news in that case would be that you just wasted some advertising money, except that you presumably bought the "advertising link" for purposes other than PageRank...;)
SlyOldDog, since you sponsor that site, why don't you ask them to change the link and the surrounding text to one GIF? It surely won't hurt.
I'll try to give you the best information I can:
Ciml - Of course we took the link for traffic reasons. We've even had a couple of visitors from it :).I've had a look around the site and you may be right. A few sites being linked to have the grey bar of death. Others have plenty of links but only a few of them show up as backward links. On the other hand there is one site it links to with pagerank 6 and the only have 3 other backward links, none good enough to give them a 6. Could this "cannot pass on pagerank" penalty be selective within the site? Wierd.
Damn! when we took out the link most links were passing on 7s and 8s! I should have been back to check before.
Jomaxx, it can't be an invisible jump in pagerank because our SERPs positions are identical. There are 28 internal links and 1 external link (mine ;)).
Markus, other pages are also pagerank 5. I am pretty sure my site is not penalised (god forbid:)). Instead of changing the link to a GIF I think it might be safer to pull it considering the number of sites with the grey bar which took a link from them.
Beachboy - nice try. Unfortunately not :(
Just goes to show, there's no easy way to riches. Google beat me again!
If theme page A = theme page B, pass on pagerank like in original formula
Else
If theme Page A sorta = Page B, pass on some page rank
Else
Don't pass on any PR, but show link in back links just to prevent people from reverse engineering our PR algo and to confound the webmasterworld folks.
What about the possible effect of all links out from your homepage? I know some people will say that a page can't "lose" pagerank due to outbound links, but I can't understand the reasoning behind that.
P.S. I don't disbelieve what you are saying about SERP positions, but I don't think you have enough information to say that there was no effect on your PR. I still think that a smaller-than-expected jump due to some dampening effect is a more likely explanation than theming or some exotic and selective penalty.
What about the possible effect of all links out from your homepage? I know some people will say that a page can't "lose" pagerank due to outbound links, but I can't understand the reasoning behind that.
A page can have 2000 outbound links and it won't make one iota of difference with regards to it's own PR.
A page's PR is based on it's inbound links... period.
The only thing that is affected by the number of outbound links is how much PR is passed on to the pages it is linking to.
The whole "losing PR" myth is due to the fact that each outbound link to an external site lowers the amount of PR passed on to your own pages through internal linking. So, lots of outbound links to other sites will decrease the amount of PR circulating throughout your own site.
how is that not creating PR out of thin air?
Because there is a dampening factor [google.com] figured into the PageRank formula to limit the very thing you are suggesting.
The whole "losing PR" myth...
The statement above is a common misconception. PR Leakage is very real. The arguments typically used to support this position are based on a single web page, and do not apply to the PageRank interactions that occur on a typical multi-page web site.
PageRank leakage is real - I have observed it myself. There are ways you can structure your site to minimize it's effect.
A page's PR is based on it's inbound links... period.
That is true for a single web page, but is not an appropriate description for a multi-page web site. What you fail to consider is that for a typical web SITE, some of those inbound links are INTERNAL links from other pages of your own site. And if those pages have outbound links that go to other sites, that will effect the amount of inbound PR you get from those internal inbound links.
For example, say you have a subpage with a PR5, and the only outbound link on that page goes to your homepage. That internal link is one of the inbound links for your home page, and your homepage gets PR credit from it. In this case, all of the PR flowing from that page goes to the home page.
Now, let's say we add 5 more outbound links to this subpage, all to external sites. As we know, the PR credit that a page provides gets divided-up between all the outbound links on the page. Just like any other page that links to yours. So now 5/6 of the total PR credit from that page goes elsewhere, and only 1/6 of it goes to your homepage. The amount of PR credit your homepage gets from that inbound link is reduced to 1/6 of it's former value, resulting in a reduction of your homepage's PR.
It gets more complicated than that, and PageRank is calculated reiteratively, but you get the basic idea.
You can see this effect for yourself. Go to one of those "PR calculator" pages, and try various multi-page site designs, with and without external links. Note that when you add external links, the total PR for the site (total for all the pages) will DROP from when all the links are internal only, and that the amount of this drop is affected by the design of the site.
There are ways to structure your site to minimize PR leakage. There are also ways to structure your site to "re-distribute" your PageRank differently across the various pages of your site. You can concentrate a large amount of PageRank into your homepage, or you can spread it out more evenly among the pages you want to rank better. There is a lot of power to be had once you take off the single-page "blinders", and start thinking about PageRank of your site as a whole.
The whole "losing PR" myth...The statement above is a common misconception. PR Leakage is very real.
aspdesigner, you are argueing a different point. You ared both correct, other than where you suggest that Dante has it wrong.
yes, from a site perspective PR leakage is real. BUT a link on your page DOES NOT reduce your current page's PR. It does not pass along the PR it receives.
Compare Page1->Page2 to Page1->Page2->Page3. In both cases Page1 and Page2 will have the same PR.
You understand about PR leak, but most people do not. They hear PR leak and think that making dead end pages is the way to go to concentrate the PR in that page, whereas they could actually increase the PR of that page through some form of intelligent internal linking, including links out from that page.
The whole "losing PR" myth...The statement above is a common misconception.
Please carefully re-read my post. Everything you are suggesting as a "contradiction" is fully supported in my post.
Once again, to make it quite simple... (more for other readers than anything else, as you clearly understand the workings of PR distribution)
Outbound linking to external sites can indeed affect the amount PR circulating within your own site, but no amount of outbound linking will cause an individual page to "lose" any significant amount of PR from that fact alone.
The reason I call it a "myth" is due to the fact that many oversimplifications have caused inexperienced webmasters to fear ever linking to other sites.
Google's algo does not penalize for natural linking... it rewards it. In fact, GoogleGuy has suggested on more than one occasion that "hoarding" PR could be problematic.
Of course creating a strong internal link architecture is a good idea. Yes, you can maximize the way in which PR flows throughout your site. I would never suggest otherwise, but...
I can guarantee you that virtually every PR9 and 10 site out there did not get to where they are by agonizing over how to hoard PR and re-distribute it through their site. ;)
I believe the reason why the distribution of PR has changed was in an attempt to stop people selling PR.
In the old days, get a PR8 site and sell the value to others who want links, now that has been combated. We all know who did this and how Google stomped on them, now I believe Google have built it into their PR calculation to prevent such a thing from happening again.
I also believe the above is the reason why so many people (more than usual) are posting "I'be been banned/penalized" by Google this month. They haven't been banned or penalized by Google at all, it is just a change in the way PR and the algo for SERP's works. I'm not even convinced it started this month, I saw signs of it last month.
Wouldn't it be easy if we could all advertise on a PR9 site and get a PR8 or PR7 result purely because we did so? In the past this actually worked, I even did it on a few occassions.....today it doesn't work and the SERP's are better for it IMHO :)
You are right of course. It is much better that I can't buy myself pagerank.
I agree that something has been done at Google to stop pure Pagerank being passed on. This must have happened in that horrible update in September. I just can't quite figure it out. Somehow pagerank is still factored in but less so. Our pagerank didn't drop in that update but a few of our sites lost rankings. Could it be context? I doubt it. The web has a long way to go before it could be used productively.
