Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
If the page is orphaned then it won't receive PR from rest of the site. However if you can get it into Google's index by linking to it and the site is an authority would it pass any reputation to your site?
I guess it depends whether authority and trust are transferred solely by PR or if there is a trust factor associated with *any* page in a trusted domain.
Observations? Opinions?
Historically, an orphaned page (by definition) could not have any value to pass on, but the calculations are by no means simple now.
The most I could say with confidence is that it's unlikely to be as useful as a page that isn't orphaned.
I suppose the question comes down to whether authority/trust is passed around a site via interlinking, or whether it is something "inherited" by virtue of being part of a particular domain.
The question in the other thread talks about a "PR 5 website", but PR is per page, not per site.
A page that is simply not linked from the rest of the pages on its parent site ...
...can still have external inbound links from other sites delivering Page Rank to it.
That should mean a link on the "orphaned page" could well pass on whatever value Page Rank has these days.
If the page is really off in the wilderness and doesn't link to its parent site anymore the value of a link on it might even go up because of fewer links leading off the page.
(a) no IBLs to the page from outside the site.
(b) page isn't indexed because it's just too deep in a truly huge site i.e. the click path to the page is just too long for Google.
I didn't mean a page that had been 'cut off' from the rest of the site so 'orphaned' is a bad definition to use, apologies.
And it's not PageRank I'm thinking of but something else - 'TrustRank' perhaps. I don't at present have time to read all the patents and do experiments closely but I wonder if anyone else that does has any experience in this area.
"page isn't indexed because it's just too deep in a truly huge site i.e. the click path to the page is just too long for Google"
If it isn't indexed, then there's no possibility of search engine value. If it's indexed, but has few internal links, then it becomes much closer to normal calculations about value.
I suppose the question comes down to whether authority/trust... is something "inherited" by virtue of being part of a particular domain.
If it isn't indexed, then there's no possibility of search engine value
My feeling would be that you would not get much value, other than if the link you placed was itself high value. I would certainly give it a go though.
Of course, then you get into the issue of how to quantify link value - a tricky area.
