PR From Outbound Link?

[mosley700]

Until recently, a site we manage was sponsored by a large corporation with a PR8 site ( for some reason it dropped to PR7 in the last update ).
When the sponsorship ended, we removed the link from our pages. In all of our pages that are in the Google index, this was the only site that we linked to. (In other words, we do link to hundreds of sites, but those links are in javascript generated pages that google never sees.)
After we removed the link to the PR8 site, our PR7 turned into PR6.
Is there any PR from outbound links? It seems unlikely, but it's all I can figure.

[fathom]

The loss of the inbound PR8 link (now PR7) would seem to be a logical drop.

[Chris_R]

Is there any PR from outbound links?

no

Your site dropped in PR - as there are 2.5 billion other pages out there - each recalculated every month.

Your site dropped either because they dropped and/or added more links to other sites - decreasing the value of yours.

[salmo]

While in this case I agree that the drop in pagerank is most likely due to the removed incoming link, I'm not convinced that outgoing links don't have any impact on pagerank. A site has an "Authority" value, calculated partially as a result of the number and quality of incoming links, but should it not also have a "Hub" value, calculated as a result of the quality (and maybe number as well) of sites to which it links?

[rfgdxm1]

Which would mean all I'd have to do to increase my PR is add links to respected, quality sites.

[mosley700]

>>Which would mean all I'd have to do to increase my PR is add links to respected, quality sites.<<

It seems to have an affect, although this has to be very unlikely. The PR8 site never linked to our site. They were simply an exclusive sponsor, with a small banner saying so on every page of our site. We never lost a link. We gained about 200 incoming links over the last two months, and still our PR dropped. I can only guess it is because we removed the link to the respected site....

[heini]

Mosley700, I think that's an interesting observation. It's hard to tell what exactly might have caused your PR to drop, especially with larger sites with lots of links.

But then your observation is in line with what some people think might be a variable in the equation that might start to carry more weight.

To me outbound links, ontopic and to well respected sites, are definitely something to consider.

[fathom]

Well since all other outgoing links were javascript the PR8 site was getting the maximum PR from you.

It is quite possible that the PR8 site linked to someone else that was linked to you. The PR8's site's drop to PR7 and your removal of links possibly made the PR level transferred to the third party >>less<< and therefore less to you.

Mere spectulation, but what goes around in small circles comes around on theme.

[martinibuster]

Newbie HollyHats made the same observation last week. I can't find the thread anymore. But HollyHats noted that she had a big fat banner gif on her index page and that her pr seemed to be higher for it. Or something like that.

As for me, I'm interested in the hub effect. But this has to balanced with this thought: How many of your top serps belong to sites with outbound links? I wager not many. This may throw some water on that theory. Or maybe not. It's worth investigating...

[Sasquatch]

I would not be surprised if there was some value to be gained by an outbound link, but I don't think it would affect Pagerank.

Theme, hub or directory type ranks would probably be their own values, and not mixed in with PR.