Outbound links increase PR, not decrease?

[JeremyL]

While looking into another issue on a BBS system I noticed something strange on a very simple bbs demo on a script site. You know the ones. They were basically a page with a list of links to the threads with nothing but text. Basically a pure text threaded forum system. All the pages are cgi generated to flat files so all the threads are lik 1.html and 13.html and so on.

Well to the point. The main bbs page is pr7. If I go through and click on all the bbs pages I notice a patern. Most all of the threads have no links or maybe 1 except the navigation. They all have a pr of 6. But the few threads that do have many links (these are like 10+) have a pr of 7.

So either the number of links outbound on that page increased the pr, or the pr of the pages being linked to increased the bbs page pr. Or maybe both.

Anyone else seeing this on any of thier sites? Link pages that have no back links directly to them getting increased pr?

[NotePad]

hhmm seems to go against the whole idea of the rank system, if it were true, getting rank would be too easy..
i dunno, just thinking out loud.

[KevinC]

I have heard some talk about linking to authority hubs with good link text can do some good - but I don't have enough experience to say for sure.

[doc_z]

JeremyL

did you try to find out if there are additional incoming links of these PR7 threads, i.e. searching for backlings with google?

[Crow187]

Also if it's one of those xxxxxx.bbsboard.com BBS where they're hosted by a central bbs dot com, the pagerank might just be an estimate of the page's real PR. Google guesses a PR for those, just like it does for geocities.com.

[yetanotheruser]

Most all of the threads have no links or maybe 1 except the navigation.

Are they pages without any links? Afaik, pages with no links will have to be dealt with as special cases, otherwise they drain rank from the rest of the site.. Perhaps they get a different dampening factor, and their rank dispersed?

[JeremyL]

did you try to find out if there are additional incoming links of these PR7 threads, i.e. searching for backlings with google?

I just checked and the only incoming links for any of the threads is internal doamin navigation links. As far as the number, there are 2-4 incoming links from withing the site only and it does not seem to have a relation with page rank as some of thePR6 threads have more links then the pr7 threads.

Also if it's one of those xxxxxx.bbsboard.com BBS where they're hosted by a central bbs dot com, the pagerank might just be an estimate of the page's real PR. Google guesses a PR for those, just like it does for geocities.com.

No it's not one o those bbs. It is a normal threaded bbs that you can download an put on your server. Just a demo version that is whiped clean nightly. Am I allowed to name the demo bbs? Im not sure the rules on this one.

Are they pages without any links? Afaik, pages with no links will have to be dealt with as special cases, otherwise they drain rank from the rest of the site.. Perhaps they get a different dampening factor, and their rank dispersed?

Some of the pr6 threads have 1-2 outbound links. The ones with pr7 have probably 10+ links on them. (ALL have interal naviagation links.)

Also on a side not, I did see my link page on one of my sites go from pr4 to pr3 when I cut my links in 1/4. Wasn't sure if it was a corilation but this may say so.

[yetanotheruser]

Some of the pr6 threads have 1-2 outbound links. The ones with pr7 have probably 10+ links on them.

Jeremy,

I'm being a bit dozey.. Should have pointed that (according to the original google paper) the number of links on a page doesn't affect the pages pageRank.

Only thing I can think of is that the higer PR threads were more popular when google spidered (ie links from other pages - 'most popular threads'.), have you checked the number of backlinks for the different threads?

Perhaps google applies a different dampening factor for pages with outbounds?

I'd be quite interested in the url if you fancy stickying it to me :)

[JeremyL]

Actually I think I proved myself wrong. Since the BBS completely goes blank every night and the spammer have to repost (or use a script to repost), then freshbot is encountering pages that are new everytime and since freshbot doesn't recalculate PR, it shouldn't give higher pr to the higher link pages. I will watch the bbs over a longer period and see if the higher PR moves around with the new thread urls' that have the higher links.