20,000 new pages, should they be linked?

[steve_3231]

We will be adding about 20,000 new product pages every so often to our site. Will google bot find them by just placing them in a directory but not having any internal links to them? We will have a search page that will find various pages for users, but this will be dynamic.

Thanks

[SlyOldDog]

Highly unlikely. If you want them crawled, make an index and link to each product. Even then you need to keep the number of fields in the URL to a minimum.

[steve_3231]

What do you mean by the number of fields in the url?

Thanks...

[steve_3231]

Also, will making an index and linking to all these pages decrease the page rank of the home page which will point to the index?

[Yidaki]

>will making an index and linking to all these pages decrease the page rank of the home page which will point to the index?

Yes - but it will increase page rank of the linked pages. Hard decisions these days. ;)

[Gus_R]

Also, will making an index and linking to all these pages decrease the page rank of the home page which will point to the index?

put a link back to home in each one of them

[ciml]

> What do you mean by the number of fields in the url

I think SlyOldDog's referring to 'dynamic' looking URLs, where you have example.com/something?a=1&b=2&c=3

It is easier to get a large site crawled if you have 'static' looking URLs.

[SlyOldDog]

Aye

[steve_3231]

So then just putting a link back to the home page from each of these product pages might get them crawled? By linking to the home page will the page rank of the home page not be affected then?

Thanks...

[SlyOldDog]

Sorry, Steve, no.

You need to create a path from your home page to each product to be sure of a crawl.

The link back to your homepage just ensures you pass some of the pagerank back to the homepage so you aren't wasting it. Of course, you can put links on your product pages to anywhere in your site, but to minimize pagerank drain, you should link back to your most important content pages.

[steve_3231]

Thanks,

that brings up another point... my home page has links to about 15 basic pages of the site and each one of those pages links to the same 15 basic pages. Should the basic pages only link to the home page and NOT to all the basic pages?

[caveman]

Yidaki,

Sorry but I'm not clear on something...why would Steve's plan decrease PR of the homepage?

Links to other pages from the homepage, so far as I understand it, do not dilute the PR of the homepage; only the PR of the pages linked to from the homepage (the more outbound links from a page, the more diulted each link becomes).

If anything, adding new pages could increase the homepage's PR...if all of the new pages link back to the homepage. Is that not correct?

[caveman]

Yidaki,

Sorry but I'm not clear on something...why would Steve's plan decrease PR of the homepage?

Links to other pages from the homepage, so far as I understand it, do not dilute the PR of the homepage; only the PR of the pages linked to from the homepage (the more outbound links from a page, the more diluted each link becomes with respect to adding PR value to other pages).

If anything, adding new pages could increase the homepage's PR...if all of the new pages link back to the homepage. Is that not correct?

(sorry, hit a wrong button and added the edit as another post)

[Yidaki]

caveman, yes, you're absolutely right - i stand corrected! Don't remember what i tried to say with my yesterday post - except that steve's site will benefit from linking to the site map(s) rather than getting hurt.

But i'm not the pr guy here anyway. ;)

[caveman]

Yidaki, thanks.

Steve_3231, regarding :
<my home page has links to about 15 basic pages of the site and each one of those pages links to the same 15 basic pages. Should the basic pages only link to the home page and NOT to all the basic pages?>

I believe it depends on whether you want to distribute PR value to the other 14 subs *plus* the homepage, or give more value back just to the homepage. That, like Yidaki suggested, is a difficult choice these days.