Can links from a PR n/a page help ranking? How about nofollow?

[member22]

Hello,

I am builiding links for my website and I try to only have link from webpages that have a high PR with a minimum number of links.

However I have always wondered if it was useful for my ranking to have links from pages that don't have a PR (n/a) and what about the pages that have a no follow attribute ( is it useful or no to create links on those pages ? )

Secondly how about if the main site has a high PR but the webpage where my link is has no PR (n/a) is it useful ?

To summarize is it useful for have links on websites that don't have any PR (n/a) or have the no follow attribute as far as ranking or is just going to be useful for word of mouth ?

Thank you,

[tedster]

A nofollow link does not send PR or link text power - there's no direct help there except, as you mention, a possible inderect viral effect. But a PR n/a page (gray bar) can be a good thing - especially for the future.

I am happy with a link from any page that could send targeted traffic - that's my main criteria. It's amazing how a "sleeper" page can sometimes turn into quite a valuable link asset in the future, and sometimes the near future.

[brinked]

in my experience, a link from a n/a page holds greater weight than a link from a 0 page

[member22]

So what does n/a mean ? I thought it was under 0 ?

[tedster]

N/A just means "not available" - no data. It's common to see that for new pages until the next PR Update comes around. It seems that there are other reasons, too -- pages with very little content but a list of links for example.

[aristotle]

A naturally acquired backlink profile will include many nofollow links and links from PR n/a pages. So if you are artificially link building and focus on only getting followed links, and links from pages with high PR, you will end up with an unnatural link profile. The Google algo might detect such an unnatural profile, and this could possibly produce a negative effect on your site's search rankings.

[trakkerguy]

focus on only getting followed links... you will end up with an unnatural link profile... and this could possibly produce a negative effect

Good point. I'm thinking I should be hiring some cheap blog commenting to make my link profile look "more natural".

[Gentoo7]

what does pr n/a mean?

[edited by: Gentoo7 at 5:58 pm (utc) on May 13, 2009]

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, Gentoo.

"Not available" means that a publicly visible PR number (toolbar PR) has not been exported from Google's back end. It can mean that the url is just too new, or it can be a bug, or it can mean that Google has intentionally chosen not to display a number on the toolbar. When there is no data available, the toolbar shows gray, in contrast to a white PR0.

[aristotle]

In my opinion, in some cases Google may be using the gray bar as a trick to hide the real PR of a page which actually does have a positive PR. Google could be doing this in directories, for example, as a way to discourage the buying and selling of links. Many of these gray-barred pages used to have a publicly-visible positive PR, and still have the incoming backlinks which supplied that PR, and by the rules of PR flow should still have that PR as well.