Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Anyone notice that since the new infastructure was rolled out the bot is not as able to index pages containing large link numbers?. Like directory index pages, site maps etc, etc as well as it used to?
Now i know in google guidelines it states you should stick to around 100 links maximum on a page but until recently google was able to follow a much higher number. I now notice that the bot struggles at anything close to 200 links.
On big sectors of my site im having to clean up some of my index areas due to having far to many links on a page ie like 300 or so, i didnt want to produce zillions of site maps so was hoping i could go to say 150 maximum links a page section.
Anyone had any experience of this and what would you say its capacity is?
Why doesn't Google add that to its algorithm (spell check that)?
One of my high ranking competitors' site it utter garbage on the index page. Nothing but scattered junk and links EVERYWHERE.
Certainly, this doesn't mean that they don't offer valuable information... but it does raise the question of pure quality.
A good example is - Yet, another site... is ranked #1 for their competative search term. Yet, the site is total trash. The page views for the site also back that up - Site has many pages, but people are getting only to the second page... and then leaving. Is this the sort of 'traffic' aspect that Google was suppose to add to their algorythm when judging a quality site?
Now about 100 links per page and it not being any use to th user:
A 3 column table…split in a-z index style..33 links per column…this is a small page… very easy for the user to navigate and saves them an extra click…what’s the problem?
as for urls that arent a <a>link</a>
google will follow any url whther in a link or not. It will also put vaule to that link. How much? I dont know. But i have seen pages that are only linked to from comment tags place in the serps.
Also, in your example of 100 links broken down - I'm not saying that it isn't easy to follow... but this entirely depends on the overall structure of items. For example, if I wanted to look at cars and some site gives me a list like that with separate boxes labeled Honda, GM, etc.... then yes, that works great.
However, if I go to a site, and they have a link to every single page in their directory all on the main page, each one being some sort of different resource like 'Articles' 'Forums' 'Advertise' (you know, completely different subjects, but TONS of them).... then I'll hit the back button. I don't know anyone that wastes there time fishing around a pile of garbage to find this one little thing.
Make sense?
Of course... how do you apply that theory to a mathmatical equation?
physically count it as a one way link
then yes, that works great.
how do you apply that theory to a mathematical equation?
You study computer science ..applied maths and a dozen other topics for 15 years then try it!
There is a difference between a "just a pile of links" page and a page that contains hundreds of links for a reason, and is designed for useability
Count as in how?..links are weighted a million different ways (almost)
I know there could be a million ways the link can be weighed... after all, the weight is part of a mathmatical calculation.
But lets try to break it down easier... if at all possible.
If a site is mentioned in a forum, like this one. And lets say that site happens to be relevent to this site in various ways. Then would that count as a Good, O.K, or Pathetic link.
I know there's tons of variables here, just try to work with me. :)
So if my site was mentioned as - (no anchor tags, just plain text) www.widget.com is offering such and such for free, blah blah blah - Then google will follow that, and physically count it as a one way link, correct?
No, as BeeDeeDubbleU and RichTC already pointed out. If it's not a link, well, it's not a link and it won't be followed.
When soapystar said "google will follow any url whther in a link or not," it should have been expanded to read "any fully-qualified url."
If Gbot sees http://www.example.com/ somewhere in the html, or even straight javascript, it will most often follow it, though there's somewhat of a consensus that it won't be given any value.
Actually I found many occurances that they in fact do follow plain text links. A good test would be to plop a made-up plain text url to nowhere on your site and see if it gets crawled. Even though it isn't hyperlinked google does see the link. Now the question is if it holds any weight. I have seen google crawl URIs buried in javascript like an adsense tracking script as an example.
To try out the text as a link, does anyone know if Googlebot is going to show up to their site soon, to test the theory?
My sight just got crawled a couple of days ago... thus I'd probably have to wait another month to check this out myself.
Of course this was reflected in google sitemaps.
No, as BeeDeeDubbleU and RichTC already pointed out. If it's not a link, well, it's not a link and it won't be followed.
wrong wrong wrong.....oh and also wrong!
where you been?...
All that has to happen is that the text mentioning your site includes a proper URL for google to follow it but the URL does not have to be a live link in href tags. I am not sure if a mere mention of yoursite .com would be enough though.
[edited by: arubicus at 10:55 pm (utc) on July 7, 2006]
Yep
All that has to happen is that the text mentioning your site includes a proper URL for google to follow it but the URL does not have to be a live link in href tags.
Agreed, see my msg 13 [webmasterworld.com].
soapystar, are you saying that G will follow www.example.com in the text of a page? If so, that's something I've never seen.
soapystar, are you saying that G will follow www.example.com in the text of a page?
Yes.
experiment with it. Set it up pointing to a new page. See what happens.
But for purposes of PageRank and backlinks, a pure text mention of a domain (or a javascript mention, or a form mention) will not be figured into the ranking.
i have seen evidence that this is not true. By that i mean i have seen pages rank when only linked this way.
Why?
A citation is a citation.
pure text mention of a domain (or a javascript mention, or a form mention) will not be figured into the ranking
without deep knowledge of the algoit is simply not possible to make this an authorative statement and should only be presented as opinion.
without deep knowledge of the algoit is simply not possible to make this an authorative statement and should only be presented as opinion.
I agree, soapystar, this is just my opinion. It's based only on the fact that I have never seen a counter-example. Nevertheless, behind the scenes at Google, all kinds of things are possible.
And to be totally straight, my post really wasn't worded precisely enough. "Figured in" is way too vague a phrase. What I really should have said is that I hve never seen such a text-only citation impact PageRank or spread backlink influence. But I also am only looking at live examples and I haven't set up a test case.
i have seen pages rank when only linked this way
To establish this possibility, the url would need to completely orphaned within its own domain, too -- otherwise there is a link to that url spreading some PR. Have you seen such an orphaned url that shows PR on the toolbar and is only mentioned through a text citation somewhere else on the web? Or have you seen the page with just a text citation listed in the link: operator's results?
I've seen lots of domains get mentions in articles without links and I never yet saw that kind of mention boost position on the SERPs. In fact, recently a client of mine got such text-only mention on the Home Page of a major, major website and saw no benefit, not even the slightest budge on the results.
But no, I have not tested my understanding with a completely orphaned url on an experimental domain - so it definitely is just my opinion. I would be gald to be proven wrong -- but it won't stop me from working for real anchor tags.
so while you cant say much weight is given to them you can say SOME weight is given to them or they could not rank above other pages at all.
