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Is outbound linking, certainly to good sites - a bad thing in any way? does the total PR for your site drop if you have 20 outbound links to PR3 + sites? - i would have thought it would in fact be a good thing - as promoting linking is a good thing - both for visitors and for googlebot...
so should i be linking - are links pages a good thing - and should i stop trying to protect my PR?
Harley
A bit narrow on the vision.
Have you read this thread? I'm considering 'the effect of adding an additional outgoing link on a page of your site (while the rest of the system is unchanged)'. In other words, I'm discussing the mathematical effect of adding additional links on your page and I said this clearly. Nothing more, nothing less. Therefore, most of the points you mentioned might be valid (the same as the argument given by steveb), but are not part of the case which I'm discussing. (Don't say it's unrealistic - it's simply the definition of the studied system.)
Point 2): Even in this case there is a decrease, because
- there is a damping factor
- the additional benefit is very small (much smaller than the decrease on your link page) since the additional PR is always devided by the number of outgoing links
My main point is too many get caught up in "their site/their page PR" and PageRank was never meant as a savings mechanism or "how do I keep my PR".
Generally speaking > if you link out and link out to sites "related" to you, eventually the "site-wide loss" is regained with even more than you lost.
We however, don't follow the mathematically equation across all pages, on all subsequent sites, and plot out the PR metrix across the web. The equation is a little redundant, less you do so.
We only look at what we have, and what we lose... and much less about what we gain (since someone elses site isn't ours).
Even in this case there is a decrease, because - there is a damping factor
Sure thing > and that damping factor is apply to all sites with pages that link out not just yours... therefore for every site retains much more PR than they pass.. meaning all gain.
I mainly agree. It's just a different discussion. And (as already mentioned in msg 48) although I know that outgoing links (in case of that 'simple point of view') decrease PR, I have a number of outgoing links on my site.
So you are saying that someone who has a higher PR because of non-relevant backlinks, will be ranked higher on G, than someone with relevant backlinks, for the same search term?
No. Just the fact that while passing PR between pages the PR value is independent of Topic Relevancy :)
Suppose theoretically the Widget and Blodgett industries start out on equal PR footing. If the Widget industry sites interlinked to each other via outbound links, and the Blodgett industry did not (for fear of a mythical PR link or any other reason), very soon the Widget industry in general would have higher PR than the Blodgett industry, and each individual Widget website would have higher PR than the parallel Blodgett sites.
And it would all be due to outbound/external linking.
You should stop confusing people with obviously incorrect and incomplete statements. Outbound links do not lead to a PR leak or a loss of PR. It is simply not true. *In some circumstances* outbound links lead to a loss of PR, but those instances are relatively rare for average webmasters. In the vast majority of cases when people reading here think of outbound links, they think of reciprocation of some sort (either direct reciprocation or "implied reciprocation" where you hope for future benefit), and in those cases your statements are completely, absolutely incorrect.
The value of outbound links to the raising of PR is crucial, just like the value of internal links is crucial to raising PR. Don't think in boxes. The point is to think about all your pages/sites/domains. An outbound link from pagex.html might lead to pagex.html gaining one or two or more points in PR, even if the link is not directly reciprocated. (Again, the obvious example is if pagex.html links to yahoo and yahoo links back to your index.html page which then links to pagex.html).
PR can be "bootstrapped". You can increase your own PR, both via internal linking, and via *sensible*, non-random external linking.
1. Initially create your "links" page as a very deeplink within your site. www.widgets.co.uk/a/b/c/d/e/f/g/links.html.
2. On your index page, link to "second page" wholly within your site, so no PR is "leaked" out of your site (if that's that you think happens)
3. On this "second page", have as many internal links as you want back into your own site (say 100), and only one to your deeplinked links page.
Shouldn't this mean that :
a. your very deeplinked page will attract little "natural" PR because it is so deeply linked.
b. you only "leak" (if that's what happens) 1/100 of the nominal PR that is on this page outside your site.
c. if you see any worryingly high PR on this links page (you probably won't, and you're only leaking 1/100th of it anyway - if that's what happens) simply create another links page at :
www.widgets.co.uk/a/b/c/d/e/f/g1/links.html, and capture that valuable 1/100th of PR you are leaking (if that's what happens).
Personally, I'm not worried about PR leaks - it's an interesting theoretical debate, but one which in my view isn't that critical to the overall scheme of things. As compared to, say getting an additional person to link to me (yeah I know its logarithmic)
<edited by manilla - typo not spotted on initial submission>
PageRank is a global calcalution, based on all pages of the web (that Google knows of), each part of that equation is influenced equally across all pages (including the damping factor).
This is a global exercise.
The more connections you reach out to the more chance you of have at receiving connections without any effort on your part. Bearing in mind > if a link out is relevant (NOT directly related to PageRank) the chance that someone will notice the link > take a good > and link back > because the value of what you have adds value to what they have.
To be effective in gaining PageRank you really need to set aside the equation (simply because you can never, ever calculate all the variables) and look only at simply logic.
The more you give (the more "web-like you are")... the more you get! ;)
Imagine if only SEO's knew about that PR tool, the rest of the world would cary on in bliss. If they were found relatively high, they were relatively happy.
We, with a little inside knowledge look at the PR before we look at the actual website and our brainbox makes some sort of decision about the site without actually looking into it.
Have we been Googled?
Whilst we are developing our website do we consider Google before our prospective customers.
I ask again; have we been Googled?
We begin to worry about a link from our site, no matter how relative or important it may be to our visitors.
I think we have been Googled.
The more connections you reach out to the more chance you of have at receiving connections without any effort on your part. Bearing in mind > if a link out is relevant (NOT directly related to PageRank) the chance that someone will notice the link > take a good > and link back > because the value of what you have adds value to what they have.
If I *reach out* by linking to Microsoft and Google, they won't link back to me. They won't *notice* the link, even if their sites are relevant to the page I'm linking from. All I would be doing is voting some of my PR to them. And the relevancy of an outbound link has nothing to do with the calculated raw PR on my site nor the Google PR for my page. It's a link out and that's all there is to it. This is a quite separate issue from whether links are a good or bad thing - it's a simple calculation. If I believe linking to Microsoft and Google is what I want to do for my visitors then there would be a case to do it, but I would be balancing the benefit to my visitors against the potentially detrimental effects it would have on the visibility of my site.
I don't see much evidence of the kind of altruism you're referring to.
Q. Do outbound links leak PR?
A. Yes
Q. Is the PR loss significant?
A.No.
You missed some very important information. ;)
obviously, there are two effects when you add an outgoing link on your page:
1) You change the link structure and therefore you decrease your PR (the direct contribution)
2) Due to the new outgoing link on your page someone will add/remove link(s) to your page
I always refer to the first effect (and mentioned this cleary, so that nobody could overlook this) and I answered this question clearly. This effect can be calculated on a mathematical basis.
Of course, adding outgoing links influences other webmasters and therefore will change the link structure and the PR of your site. Alhough there is no doubt about this effect, it was never part of my discussion (so far) and it shouldn't be too hard to see that. Also, the effects you are referring to, strongly depends on several factors, such as the PR of your page, the topic of the page (profit, non-profit - because that will influences the decision if you'll get a backlink or not) and others. Therefore, it impossible to discuss these effects in general. You have to refer to the specific circumstances to make a guess. And even in this case it would be a guess - in contrast to the first effect. (However, this was never the part I was referring to.)
Suppose theoretically the Widget and Blodgett industries start out on equal PR footing. If the Widget industry sites interlinked to each other via outbound links, and the Blodgett industry did not (for fear of a mythical PR link or any other reason), very soon the Widget industry in general would have higher PR than the Blodgett industry, and each individual Widget website would have higher PR than the parallel Blodgett sites.
And it would all be due to outbound/external linking.You should stop confusing people with obviously incorrect and incomplete statements.
Again, you are referring to an 'exchange'. (Even if you don't read that I'm discussing the mathematical effect of adding additional links, you should have read the title of this thread.) Also, your example is definitely incorrect and can be easily disproven on a mathemical way (just take the original papers and make some analytical or numerical calculations). Assuming that the Widget and Blodgett industries have the same number of pages and the same amount of incoming and outgoing links to third party (third party = neiter Widget nor Blodgett industries), the PR of both industries would be the same. (I won't discuss that. As already mentioned, everyone who doubt about this, can do this calculation by it's own. In contrast to many other points, this is a fact and not a point of opinion.)
I'm not worried about losing PR. I just want to answer a question.
Consider if I have a one page site with one incoming link from DMOZ and say this gives my page a PR 6. I am getting my PR as a result of the DMOZ link. Why would adding any number of outbound links change the PR I am getting from DMOZ?. If PR is all about "voting" for another page, in my example I am getting no less votes from DMOZ as I was before adding the outbound links.
I can see that as I add more links to my page, each link has a smaller amount of PR to pass to the pages it links to, so my adding more links to my page may decrease the PR of other pages I have linked to. The only way the DMOZ link to offer me less PR is if the category from which I was receiving my link had more web sites added to it.
this question was already answered, e.g. see msg #48.
That is exactly right. He was not reffering to one page sites I gather.
It not a technical fact so much as technically nonsense. You aren't understanding what PR is. If I link to site1, and it doesn't link to me, but it links to site2, and site 2 links to me because that webmaster sees I'm an authority on the topic and link to sites that have enough sense to link to his site... PR is a swirling ocean. It's not an apple. You guys have to get it out of your head that PR that is passed is "gone". It's nonsense. PR moves. PR builds, and dissipates, and raises many boats. Sites that do not have outbound links (except for the super-heavyweights like Adobe) are just not a part of the party.
It's a fully trivial point to talk about passing out "your" PR. This only occurs when a site uses dunderheaded linking, like a needlepoint site aimlessly linking to nasa.com, irs.gov, etc. Sites simply doint pointlessly link very often. The important issue is the movement of PR. You should be giving PR to others so as to get PR yourself. You can do this on a page level on your own site, or a domain level by exterior linking.
Selfish people don't understand sharing. Sharing is central concept behind PR.
One thing else I want to add. I have read many discussions that maybe 2 outbound links per page is okay but care should be taken to link to only high PR sites.
I think it's an urban legend. This will result in a tree structure with all pages linking to a few thousand PR10 pages. That is not how web operates. Feel free to link to lower PR sites like mine. ;)
And again this is obviously not true. You can't pretend that the math doesn't exist. You can't pretend that Google's published documents on PR don't exist.
Again, to those zillion new webmasterworld members that Google has created this past month, what doc_z is saying is only true in the most simplisticly useless way. If the world ended the second after you made a *random* outbound link, you would have reduced the available PR that you could wash through your site. Fine. This is entirely trivial and misleading to what actually occurs in the real world when you link out.
Aside from benevolent inbound links (like from DMOZ, who expect nothing in return), the way to increase your PR is to *use* it, and to use it on as many pages as possible. You want as many ants working for you as you can. restricting your worker ants only to your domain is foolish. You only have so many pages of your own. You want other sites on the web helping to increase your PR. Outbound links do NOT evaporate the PR that is passed. An outbound link is exactly the same as an inbound link. I use my outbound linking to increase the PR of every single page on my domain. I use my PR to make extract PR from tens of thousands of other webpages around the Internet that are not on my domain.
There is a scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" where the Kid first misses a tin can when he has to stand still. When he draws and fires he hits the can. He says: "I'm better when I move." The same with PR. Move it around *sensibly*, using your own pages and the pages of other *sensible* webmasters. It is better when it moves.
It's simply worthless to focus on that moment in a store where you hand the clerk some money, and ignore the fact that the clerk is about to hand you your loaf of bread... and also ignore the effect that has on the farmer, and the plastic packager...
I just see that you are not interessed in facts and just attack people personally. (Even if your arguments would be right - what's obviously not the case - I would see this as a realy poor way of 'discussing'). I'm sure you have never done any PR calculation, but you claim that you have the knowledge. The Widget/Blodgett example showed that clearly. If you simply would have calculated this example, you would have seen that both will get the same PR. (Sorry, but that's a mathematical fact based on equations which can be solved, not a philosophical discussion.) If someone would have asked friendly, I would have explained this in detail so that everyone could reproduce this. However, I'm not interested in being attacked for mentioning facts.
Therefore I'll stop this 'discussion'.
After some months I should have known that a statement like ‘1+1=2’ always produce answers like these:
- ‘I don’t believe this’
- ‘half true’
- ‘yes, but 1+1+1=3’
- ‘you cannot say this without …’
- ‘you are simplifying’
- ‘you are confusing people’
- ‘in general I agree, but …’
- ‘I though the answer is always 42’
- ‘philosophical it isn't true’
Also, it seems that the whole thread always starts from the beginning after 50 - 100 messages.
Fortunately there are also discussions based on arguments.
(Thanks to all who contribute: ciml, Marcia, Alcogooglic, AthlonInside, Hagstrom, takagi, french_tourist and others)
If I can drift slightly off topic... are there any new theories kicking around on link-hogging, i.e. people who don't link out to anyone else? A site run by people I know, and whom I compete with on certain kw's in a friendly way, have one, just one, outgoing link and it's dead. It doesn't seem to do them any damage as their PR is 6, same as my main page, but they have many more incoming links than I do. I haven't seen anything here on hogging for a while... just wondering if it's a discarded theory.
It not a technical fact so much as technically nonsense. You aren't understanding what PR is. If I link to site1, and it doesn't link to me, but it links to site2, and site 2 links to me because that webmaster sees I'm an authority on the topic and link to sites that have enough sense to link to his site... PR is a swirling ocean. It's not an apple. You guys have to get it out of your head that PR that is passed is "gone". It's nonsense. PR moves. PR builds, and dissipates, and raises many boats. Sites that do not have outbound links (except for the super-heavyweights like Adobe) are just not a part of the party.It's a fully trivial point to talk about passing out "your" PR. This only occurs when a site uses dunderheaded linking, like a needlepoint site aimlessly linking to nasa.com, irs.gov, etc. Sites simply doint pointlessly link very often. The important issue is the movement of PR. You should be giving PR to others so as to get PR yourself. You can do this on a page level on your own site, or a domain level by exterior linking.
Right. For example, on a popular resource page of mine, I like to a couple of ODP cats, all of which are interlinked, and one of which links to me. The cats also link to sites, which link to me. Eventually that little PR boost I gave the ODP cat comes back to me!
Plus, and perhaps this is an idle hope, sometimes I link to places that link to me in the hopes that other people, being of an imitative bent, will also link to those sites, and thus inadvertantly boost my PR. Bwahahaha!
Hey, everyone complains about blogs, and their daisy-chain linking, but Google loves 'em! (at least for now)
Link to some irrelevant site, and that PR floats away. (Not that it matters so much; linking out from pageA.html does not decrease the PR of pageA.html.) Link to a page that links to you, or links to you within a few pages, or links to three sites that link to you, and you'll get it back.
Plus it makes users happy, and isn't it great when users bookmark your site and come back on their own, without any search engine at all?
those zillion new webmasterworld members that Google has created this past month
You're right there! I'm one of those very carpetbaggers. I found this excellent and superbly argumentative set of forums by searching Google for "banned from Google". At least I have that much to thank them for.
As far as the general topic is concerned, I'm sticking to my basic position, which is the purely academic one that an outbound link "per se", discounting any inbound link effect, will reduce your PR. I'm doing this not because I understand too much but because I happen to trust the Google PageRank calculator I'm using. If you complicate the issue with what is good or bad for the web, and make judgements on whether altruistic behaviour is a successful strategy or not, then I'm happy to defer to others who've thought about this more than I have. All I can say on this one is that I read Richard Dawkins.
You seem to not even have read the Widget/Blodgett example as it plainly proves your statements are wrong. I do see though that you either didn't read it or understand it, so there is no point in discussing it. Others can go back and look at it and understand why what doc_z is saying is plainly wrong.
But this distraction from the original question in the thread remains trivial. The point is simply that exterior links do not necessarily "leak" PR, although they can if done dumbly. If I link to every single site on the Internet, and every single site links to me, I'll have the highest PR in the galaxy. There is no magic voodoo with exterior links. In terms of PR strategy, they can and should be treated precisely the same as interior links.
Hijacking every thread on linking with this trivial bit of nothingness is not very helpful or nice. The PR sent out into the world via a link from your site does not just die. That PR lives. Sensible webmastering examines the whole picture, not just one miniscule part.
doc_z calls this one page example a "dead end" situation. I prefer to look at this as any give node in a hyperlinked structure.
So building up from my single (index) page, I now add a second page and link to this page from my index page. For now I am not going to link back to my index page. How will linking to this second page affect the PR of my index page? Well, using the logic of my one page example, which is accepted, the adding of an outbound link will not reduce its PR - so I now have a 2 page website, the index page is linked via DMOZ and is still at PR 6 (my original example); my second page will assume some PR from the inbound link from the index page - lets say this is PR 5.
Now I decide it would be a good idea to link my second page back to my index page. How will this affect the PR of each page. Well, my second page looks a lot like my index page - it is one page with one inbound link, with some PR value (5 from above); so again, adding an outbound link from a single page will not reduce the PR of that page. However, I now have another inbound link to my index page which will icrease its PR by some small amount; in turn my index page has more PR to pass to my link page and so on. Eventually, the page rank algorithm will settle and my index page will be left with PR6+dx and my link page will be left with PR5+dx, where dx is the extra PR as a result of the link back to my index page from my second page.
Now I decide I am going to turn my second page into a true links page and I link out to numerous other websites (which I assume will not be reciprocated either directly or indirectly). Each outbound link I add will reduce the PR passed from my link page to my index page so dx will tend towards 0. Were I to add an infinite number of outbound links dx would effectively become 0, so the PR of my index page would again be PR6, and that of my links page would be PR5.
So it appears that I do reduce the PR value of both the index page and the links page, but from an already increased value resulting from the link back from my links page to my index page. It seems that I cannot reduce the PR of my index page below PR6, which it is still getting as a result of the "votes" from DMOZ.
There is an expression "make a mule of your money." It means for you to use your money to make more money. Sensible webmasters should be thinking in terms of "making a mule of your PR." You should be making your PR work for you... and now as always the value of outbound links is hugely positive in terms of increasing PR.
(Of course, PR means next to nothing to Google these days....)
I'm doing this not because I understand too much but because I happen to trust the Google PageRank calculator I'm using.
Unless the calculator was created by Google, how can you trust its accuracy? Its assumptions are undoubtedly based on Larry Page and Sergey Brin's acamedic paper, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, but there's no way for an outsider to know how the PageRank formula may have been tweaked or refined since the paper was published.
(Of course, PR means next to nothing to Google these days....)
What merlin30 said is pretty accurate is it not? After the hundreds of posts read here for many months about PR leak, that's what I've thought was the case.
No, the equation is not over. You just sent out an infinite number of links. Did this cause zero sites to link back to you? If so, your PR for your two pages is lower than if you didn't have that infinite number of links. But obviously that isn't important. What matters is what resulting effects occur because you sent out all those links. The PR is still alive out there.
A clear example is to think of a 300 page domain. On 299 of those pages you have 35 internal links, all interlinking in a sensible way. But now on the 300th page on your domain you have the same 35 internal links, but also 40 outbound links. The negative effect on your domain even if all those links were to nasa or irs would be close to zero, but you don't link that dumbly. You link to other sites on your theme for all the reasons other than PR that people link. In addition to those other benefits, you get links back to your index page (or whatever page you want). So now this 300th page on your site is generating 36 links to your main page rather than one. You didn't leak PR. The links off your domain did not cause you to lose PR in any sense. The outbound links directly swirled PR back to you in a very desirable way.
