Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.
Oh, if you are saying that I said if you have 75 links on a page, the best structure is for each of them them to go to 75 unique URLs
I still don't understand this sentence, you mean my page musnt contain duplicate links for same content (other page)? if that what you mean, what about with different anchor text?
And what about a link on a page for the same page, with an anchor text? so a page link to its self?
Cheers
Sid
You brought it up. I don't know what you are talking about.
"I still don't understand this sentence, you mean my page musnt contain duplicate links for same content (other page)?"
I don't know how to make it any clearer than to say the best structure in terms of PR is to not have duplicate links.
Ok this means for PR in general, or for the page giving out links?!
I mean here, if i want a page to get a higher PR i cant vote for it from same page 2 times?
I don't work for Google, and I believe they experiment with lots of things, but... I know of no evidence here or anywhere else that suggests that linking to a page twice or ten or fifty times sends more Pr from a page than a single link.
If a link is in navigation, my experience is that you get less punch on the ANCHOR TEXT than an inline link. The order you feed you page matters here too- with the first instance of the link (as it appears in html) being 'stronger' than subsequent links.
I would DEFINATELY feel free to add inline links where appropriate, no matter how many times something is referenced. Just don't go crazy.
Think, "wikipedia" for inline linking, only with added structure through navigation.
From ludicrously narrow PR RETENTION view, there should only be one link to a single resource. From a PR DISTRIBUTION POV, it depends on the importance of the linked-to page. From a PR MANAGEMENT view it complicates things, but frankly overall structure completely trumphs such small backflows and undercurrents of PR distribution.
You brought it up. I don't know what you are talking about.
I'm sorry, I started out trying to get you to clarify this statement:
their websites are designed non-optimally with duplicate navigation
I think you've definitely clarified what you meant by this. Now I'm simply asking why you think duplicate navigation (such as, for example, the breadcrumbs at the bottom of this page) is non-optimal.
So the times of URLs in blog comments are over?
I'd be hoping to see an evolution in the comment submission forms to two options...
1) no links as standard for a comment (no approval), or
2) pre-approved comments containing useful information which can contain a link to an article or other citation to support or explain the point being made.
That's the way I'd mod any board if it were me. Even if the link is no-followed, a drive-by is a drive by.
(a) less PR flowing back around the site, but also
(b) less PR flowing onto the rest of the web.
Because PR is calculated across the web as a whole, once sufficient iterations have been made (in the PR calculation) then normality is surely restored? There is less PR on the web as a whole but, relative to every other page, every page still has the same PR it had before the no-followed links were ignored.
Do I have this right?
Do I have this right?
Not quite, no.
PR is destroyed with every link anyway, otherwise there would be infinite PR.
What you are doing is artifically dropping the PR of the doner page, thus making a less valuable resource. This causes a localised PR drain.
While this would drop total PR available TO the web, it does not nomalise locally RELATIVE to the rest of the web.
From a PR perspective you destroy PR that you could be using.
From a "100 links per page" perspective, duplicating links means to meet google's guidance of normally not exceeding 100 links on a page, you obviously are able to link to less unique pages since you are duplicating links.
Some duplicate navigation can make sense and be user friendly, but from strictly an SEO perspective duplication doesn't help and hurts in some ways.
From a "100 links per page" perspective, duplicating links means to meet google's guidance of normally not exceeding 100 links on a page, you obviously are able to link to less unique pages since you are duplicating links.Some duplicate navigation can make sense and be user friendly, but from strictly an SEO perspective duplication doesn't help and hurts in some ways.
I went from 100 links on pages to 200 links with a fair amount of duplication for user-friendliness, and I saw no difference in PR on any page. I think that the 100 limit is overrated. If you have a complex site with many facets, and you are linking to valuable content, I really don't think G cares that much based upon my experience. Perhaps there is a threshold, but I have not seen it.
In addition, I have not seen penalties for outbound links on both my sites and on others. I have seen some other PR8 sites with not only tons of outbound do follow links, but with many of them broken!
Again, I think there is too much focus on certain numbers here--especially when the algorithm involves hundreds of factors (and perhaps even some human intervention).
And now that Bing is bringing in decent results, and Yahoo is a bit more consistent than a year ago, the dupe arguments and link limits do not seem to be as clear-cut as advertised. Look at Yahoo's home page. It links out to 150+ pages quite often... MSN links out to between 200 and 250 on a regular basis. I caught Amazon at over 350 on its home page the other day (admittedly customized to my user choices). And there are plenty of dupe links on all these sites.
I went from 100 links on pages to 200 links with a fair amount of duplication for user-friendliness, and I saw no difference in PR on any page.
Perhaps Googlebot gives up when it gets to 101. So any more than that just don't get noticed.
Cheers
Sid
Perhaps Googlebot gives up when it gets to 101. So any more than that just don't get noticed.
Not sure if you are being ironic (in a friendly way), but I would have noticed if the page on the receiving end was losing PR, which has not as far as I can tell.
I believe I read somewhere that the 100 limit is a loose number. How loose is the question, and why do some big sites with high PR seem to ignore it?
I am all for minimalism, but it is not always possible when you are Grand Central Station.
I remember they asked Matt about this on his blog before, they said you blog on the right menu have more than 100 links so what?! i dont remember exactly what he replied, but its something about content and that some times you have to link for more than 100 links and it will be ok
None of that diminishes steveb's excellent point. It's smart to keep links to a "minimum-optimum" level on every page. And more than that, don't just link to any old "good content", link to content that relates well to the page where the links appear.
All links on site now "seem" internal...
Whould it be prudent to do such a thing? Why yes? Why not?
What would this do to a site's PageRank? Whould it "drain" it, too?
Thanks
[edited by: tedster at 7:41 pm (utc) on June 23, 2009]
[edit reason] de-link the example [/edit]
[google.com ]
No PageRank would ever escape from the loop, and as incoming PageRank continued to flow into the loop, eventually the PageRank in that loop would reach infinity. Infinite PageRank isn’t that helpful so Larry and Sergey introduced a decay factor--you could think of it as 10-15% of the PageRank on any given page disappearing before the PageRank flows along the outlinks.
I would not suggest removing that kind of dual linking - it makes a lot of sense for different types of users (more visually oriented and more text oriented) and you could actually lower conversion rates.
What about the so-called "masked" links?
Something like this:
http://www.sitename.tld/goto/http://www.othersite.tldAll links on site now "seem" internal...
Whould it be prudent to do such a thing? Why yes? Why not?What would this do to a site's PageRank? Whould it "drain" it, too?
Any thoughts on the subject? Thanks!
[edited by: tedster at 7:20 am (utc) on June 28, 2009]
[edit reason] de-link the example url [/edit]
What about the so-called "masked" links
Something like this:
[sitename.tld...]It's still a link, right? Every link on a page, internal or external, is part of the calculation that splits up PageRank. So it's still the same situation if you put a rel="nofollow" attribute in that link - the PageRank that would normally flow through that link would "evaporate" rather than get redistributed tom the other links on the page.
And if you don't put a nofollow on that link, it will vote it's share of PR to the url that it points to, which is most likely a redirect - so most of the PR would flow through to the final destination.
What would this do to a site's PageRank? Whould it "drain" it, too?The key to understanding is that a "site" doesn't have PR - only an individual url has PR.
And we also owe you a hearty "Welcome to the forums!"
Didn't want to point out it was my first post here, but you got me there :)
I won't link to the video but it is 1:02:03 in length and called 'Site Review by the Experts' on the official google code channel if you're inclined to watch it too (it's a good video for other reasons too, Matt knocks several issues out of the park)
I still feel pagerank sculpting is a useful tool and can help if done right however it is also a potentially harmful thing to do and not as simple as it would seem at face value, you could cut a toe off or something :-)
Well spotted.
I think that Matt is a very cleaver chap but sometimes he says things that are not 100% what he really meant to say in the stream of consciousness that comes out of his mouth. So we need to be careful in interpreting that statement exactly as it is said.
No matter whether nofollow allows you to save PR to use in other links or not I agree with you that PR sculpting is still very important but there are other ways to achieve most of the same thing. For example Tedsters method of putting all admin links onto a page and pulling that page into an iframe achieves most of what nofollow used to do for those links.
I've noticed that Google mouth pieces are talking more and more about "site structure". Johannes Henkel did a seminar session on the subject recently which I would really like to hear more about.
Cheers
Sid
