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Is "Age" one of the algorithms?
I have 260 city based (city portals). All have the same layout and similar keywords except the city name and the same amount on content (but not the same content). They vary in age from 3 years old to 1 month old.
The 3 year olds are a PR5.
The 1 years olds are a PR4.
The new ones are a PR3.
These site do not have a lot of content (4 pages each) and not a lot of external links besides some of my own sites. So is Age a factor?
Linking weight.
The PR5 website's(home page)that link to some of my other websites home page (even if they are only 1 month old) automatically bring them up to a PR4. This may be the ONLY link they are getting. So one PR5 link to you = a PR4 for your new website's home page? Has anyone come up with a best guess PR Table as it relates to Links to you and your PR? Ten PR5's to you = a PR6 for your website?
I know there are many other factors (100 different algorithms) that make up PR, but is there a best guess what multiple PR values build up to?.
Can anyone else throw out some best guesses to the 100 algorithms or good observations?
Thanks
It will be hard to prove that "Age" is independently correlated with current PR. Even though the number of external incoming links might be small, and seem evenly distributed amongst your sites, it might be that your older sites have incoming links from older external sites, and those older external sites probably have higher PR than newer sites. But if you can carefully examine and control for confounding effects like that, you'll have made a big contribution.
I'd also encourage other webmasters here, those with multiple similar domains, to take the time to analyse your own sites, to see if you see evidence of an independent Age effect.
Response to 2_Much: I have also had a new site start out of the gate with a PR 4 because of Good inbound links. What I am saying is that I have a large sample of sites that do not have good inbound links putting them on equal ground and have factored out much of the inbound link equation.
Just from my observations Age of a site contributes to PR but is not THE major factor.
time makes for more time to collect links.
older webpages sometimes have links from "expired" pages.
all things being equal, you cannot beat those older webpages.
luckily in real life not all things are equal.
also:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Allow me to offer a suggestion. Sorry if itīs too obvious.
Use google to search for one of your old pages: www.domain.com
Google will show a description of the page, and four other options (cache, similar pages, link backs and *pages containing the words*).
Click on the last option, and see how many pages have your domain on it (thatīs probably a link that doesnīt show in the link: option); do the same to the new pages, and compare results.
I have some old small sites (couple of pages) which I just forgot about; however, I am always surprised about the number of people who, for some reason, link to them (and I can only know it by using the option I mentioned above); this has purely to do with chances of someone finding my sites and liking them (I donīt ask or offer links exchanges), which means it has to do with the *age* of the sites.
27 sites were excluded from analysis because their PR is known to be determined primarily from some specific external high-PR links. Another 29 sites were excluded because they were only 3.3 months old, which could cause Altavista to severely underestimate their links, if Altavista's spidering cycle is slow. Sites that were 5.3, 7.3, 10.4, 12.9, and 13.3 months old were included for analysis.
The remaining 195 sites, showed a correlation between number of links and PR. As links increased, the trendline showed increasing PR, as expected. The number of links correlated with the Age of the site, increasing with Age. These two factors seem to completely explain this final mild correlation... that PR increased mildly with Age. We did not find evidence that Age independently correlates with PageRank. ( We did not disprove the theory, just failed to prove it).
The sites with PR4 had a median of 7.5 links, sites with PR3 had a median of 5 links, and sites with PR2 had a median of 2 links.... in this particular group of sites.
It just goes to show... if you build it, links will come. ( If the content is OK.)
I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot though saying that, considering my site is no more than 6 months old and has gained PR very quickly :)
I tend to think sites that are not updated often get penalized. I had a site dropped because I let it "rot" and it should still be on top except for the unfreshness factor. I don't know this for sure, guess I would have to update it to find out but at this point, there isn't a lot of motivation
I would go along with that. I have only ever had one site dropped, and I believe that was the reason. It was a site I did not update.
I have been trying to revive it of late, and I notice the Google is now sniffing again. Dropped for a period of about 8 months.
Converserly where I have noticed an aging factor is with sites that are about a year old, suddenly acquiring a large increase in traffic. I have never thought of trying to tie it to Google PR, but a couple of large sites come to that age before Easter, and I certainly will keep an eye on TBPR as well as traffic.
The older site came in with a PR6, moves about a bit, now PR5, so I would think for me at any rate age doesn't matter!
( when I launched the site it had approx 30 links in, now approx 650 )
However, I have noticed MSN and others; hits for the older site over the last few months have increased significantly.
Perhaps MSN use age as a factor, or are their spiders slow?
