Forum Moderators: open
I noticed Google counts backlinks (internal links) from pages within your site if the page has a PR 4 or higher.
If I do not increase my inbound links from external sites, will my pagerank increase over time?
I would like to have a PR 6 and the rest of the pages a PR 4.
I noticed Google counts backlinks (internal links) from pages within your site if the page has a PR 4 or higher.
Google only shows links meeting a certain PR criterion, but probably counts all nonpenalized links.
If I do not increase my inbound links from external sites, will my pagerank increase over time?
Possibly. I can think of a few cases where this might happen:
1. If the PR of one/some/all of the pages that link to you increases.
2. If the number of links on the pages that link to you decrease (therefore passing on more PR to your page). This is not a likely scenario but possible.
3. If you link more internal pages to the page whose PR you want to increase.
However, your best bet is to get more of those quality inbound link.
Beth
I have been studing my competitors and have about 90% of their external inbound links
It's worth noting that you will only see links with a PR of 4 or greater.
I have 90% of my competitor's PR 4+ backlinks. I do not count links with less that a PR of 4.
You were trying to work out the difference in PR ... right?
If Google calculated your PR as the average PR of all inbound links, you could seriously hurt your competitors.
And PR is not and average of the links that point to you. I highly recommend that you read the original PageRank documents to understand how it works.
Yep, listen to BigDave. You don't know what you might be missing if you only check the links to the main page.
Try this on alltheweb:
link.all:www.theirsite.com -site:www.theirsite.com
You should see all incoming links to the site indexed by atw minus the site's internal links.
>>I do not count links with less that a PR of 4.
With the above you might also find that the site has a heck of a lot of under PR4 backlinks. After all, 1+1+1+1+1 -- even in Google math -- adds up to something.
I think you make a good point when it comes to pages that do not gain their PR due to their content, but instead rely upon link exchanges.
But even there, if you have your exchanges with up and coming pages, then you are likely to gain as they gain.
In the other direction, if you have an informative page that gains links on it's own, however slowly, that page should gain PageRank over time, even if there is some PR decay on those incoming links.
This is not a "commercial vs. non-commercial" issue either, though it does tend to favor non-commercial sites. As an example, I doubt viagra.com depends on link trades with the viagra spammers for its pagerank. It comes from all those medical advice columns and doctors offices linking to it, not to mention any joke page that has a viagra joke and they decide to just go ahead and toss in the link. Its real PageRank will continue to climb, even if it may jump around a little with its toolbar PR.
...though it does tend to favor non-commercial sites.
Good point BigD, I agree that good, important, or just plain authoritative websites (Pfizer's Viagra site, or the Purple Pill website) can tend to gain PR on the strength of the quality of their content.
However I think those are the exceptions to the general trend of the web at large. Looking at the web at large, I think that the general trend is to decay.
There was an interesting article in the Register [theregister.co.uk] six months ago that noted that 2.7 million weblogs were abandoned after a day, and that 132,000 die after one year. That's a little less than 1% of Google's index.
"Quality" sites like the Pfizers, Fords, WebMDs, and the exhaustive and authoritative NIN website form a far smaller community that probably won't be affected by the general decay present in link exchanges, link structures, webpage decay, etc., as would the average website within the 3 billion plus indexed (or semi-indexed) by Google, in my opinion.
This is one of the points about PR that gets overlooked and should be stressed over and over again here at WW. And BigDave's point above about reading the original PageRank papers should be a must in any post regarding how PR works.
>>Looking at the web at large, I think that the general trend is to decay.
In the macro sense of course, following from PageRank theory that's the way it has to happen. In the micro sense, for a specific site such as benc007 cites, probably not. That is, assuming that it is a somewhat authoritative site, there is a person actively building content that can be linked to, and...well, in short, that there is somebody doing all of the mundane maintenance stuff that has to be done day to day. (and it also helps that some of those linked PR0 pages -- read PR .3, .4, etc. -- have now grown into PR1 or PR2 pages).
>>"Quality" sites like the Pfizers, Fords, WebMDs...
Pretty much bulletproof and what PageRank was predicated on, other sites linking to authority sites (Oh, what a simple world it was a few years ago). That's been pretty much undermined and linking algorithms have to take that extra "neighborhood" step to filter out the noise.
<aside>Some folks think that Google's algo is a bit 'fuzzy' right now. I think we're seeing a bit of evolution to get back to the point where people will fell a bit more confident in using the "I'm feeling lucky" button. PageRank drove that and there must be some tweaks afoot to get back to that point. Teoma is making strides, G can't standstill.</aside>
Got interupted a couple of times above and lost exactly where I was trying to go. Afraid a bit of topic from benc007's original question.
Jim
On the topic of loosing backlinks, I've lost PR4 and PR5 backlinks, so it's not just low links that are gone. Plus our PR took a hit when we lost them. I can only hope they get picked up again soon.
I have 90% of my competitor's PR 4+ backlinks. I do not count links with less that a PR of 4
A couple of other points here ...
This has to be correct. The PR pie stays the same size, for every new page added to the Google index the percentage available to everyone else has to be a tiny bit smaller.
The sites that see most decay are probably those that are not actively being updated, enlarged and promoted. Which isn't such a bad thing really as their importance in the big picture is probably also decreasing.
Google has counted some PR 3 backlinks and very occasionally PR 0 backlinks (not sure why?).
The other 5-10% of the links I do not have are from a big name relevant site. Each of these pages have a PR 4 to 6 with 10-30 outgoing links per page and uses frames when your link is clicked. Although Google is counting these framed pages as backlinks, it's going to cost $80-90 per link. Any suggestions on whether this is a good buy?
I thought every new page added to the Google index has an intitial small page rank value assigned to it.
Think of PageRank as a vote. In order to gain any PR, the new website will need a vote. The more votes it receives the higher the PR, PR being one component (of many components) used by Google to calculate a site's authority.
To get into Google's index, you generally need to be voted in (i.e. linked to). You can submit your site to Google but it won't necessarily be fully indexed.
Google is giving each new page a small amount of rank to begin with, thus adding more page rank to the whole index as was my understanding. If this is true, then the decay that has been indicated in this thread is false.
This thread is indicating that there is only a set amount of page rank available to all pages no matter how many are added
Have heard mention on more than one occasion that total page rank for the web = number of sites on the web, but have never quite managed to track down the document that confirms this.
then the decay that has been indicated in this thread is false
If the "total pr = number of sites" theory is true, it makes sense that sites not actively spreading their influence (i.e. finding new links) might suffer from a gradual decline in PR.
Errr ... I think ... ;)
You are correct as far as real PageRank goes. What most people talk about though is Toolbar PageRank. As more Real PageRank is generated, the argument goes, you will need more Real PageRank to achieve a certain Toolbar PageRank.
I disagree with this because I believe that the top Toolbar PR setting (PR11?) comes from the site with the most PR, not by some calculation based off of the total available PR. It all depends on where all those new pages point to.
There are even ways to add pages to the web that will reduce the total amount of available PR. Hang a couple of dead end pages off a PR10 page and you have instantly removed a significant amount of the PR on the web.
Top toolbar PR seems to be 10, and top Google directory PR seems to be 11, in both instances Google has this value. I haven't got the remotest idea about what the top "real PR" value might be - it might be some multiple of ten or even a number lower than one.
Regardless if it is 0.987654321 or perhaps 42, this does not really matter, as it's the relative distance between any two pages that counts. The distance between London and Rome is the same if you measure it in Kilometers or in Miles.
If all the pages of this world linked to one specific page, then this page would have the highest PR value. This would also be the maximum PR value, as this page could get no more links to increase this PR value.
Then, if one single new page emerged that did not link to this one, the "maxPR" page would still have the highest value, but not the maximum value, as it would be one link short of it. In this case, the highest PR value stays the same, while the maximum PR value increases.
So, does PR increase over time? Perhaps so (total available PR), but not your PR (an individual page), as nothing comes from nothing. IMHO, FWIW, AFAIK, etc.
/claus
I could have sworn that Google only used to show half of a site's backlinks. All seem to show now. Was I dreaming this?No storevalley, you didn't dream it, but that was something that changed in April with the Cassandra update.
Typically, when you search for backlinks Google will say it found 100 results. As you check through the backlinks and 'include omitted results' you will find exactly half as many as Google said it returned. Now I am finding less than half. Also Google says it has 32 pages from one of my domains. It shows a link to the fourth page of results until I get to the third page, then the link is gone. I can only find 29 results. ..Snippet from message 135 of the thread Update Cassandra! Google Montly Update - Part ONE [webmasterworld.com]
IMHO, FWIW, AFAIK, etc.
:) It's all educated guesses in this business :)
Very good explanation why PR decays!
