What's the best way of providing outbound links that SEs can't see?

exit.cgi type... or something else like javascript

[Macro]

I've got a 1000 page site that has a lot of content and most of the pages are PR4s and PR5s. But I have a lot of outbound links (several thousand) that are "losing" me PR.

I'd like to contain that leak. Websites who link to me will continue to get a clean link back in html that Google can see, and this is irrespective of what PR those sites have. But there are a lot of sites that I need to link to who wouldn't dream of linking back to me. I'd like to shield those outbound links somehow and improve the overall PR of this site's pages. I'm sure this has been covered before but can't seem to find it.

I obviously don't want to upset the big G because they do send me hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Please help.

[RossWal]

Macro,
If you're on a Windows server you probably want an asp redirect script. Pop-over to the Microsoft forum and someone will help you out. Maybe me, I just don't have the time right this second.

Ross

[franklin dematto]

Perhaps having a lot of outbound links gets you recognised as a hub and other sites start linking to you and boosting your PR. That's the only way I can see of increasing your PR by having outgoing links.

Macro -
AFAIK, being a hub doesn't increase your PR, but it increases your Google rank as a separate criteria.

I think Google has publicly stated this (in some of their (excellent) research papers).

[Macro]

aha!

I think Google has publicly stated this (in some of their (excellent) research papers).

Franlin, I would be most obliged if you have a link to some Google provided info on the separate criteria and how a site improves rank for being a hub.

But the PR issue still remains though :-(
The net result of having a lot of outgoing links is that overall PR for your sites' pages drops. The only issue I have with that is getting other webmasters to link - it's a lot easier the higher your PR.

RossWal, thanks. I'll check that out.

[Marval]

Macro...I don't believe you will "lose" PR based on the number of outgoing links you have...the basis of that would be that you just transfer less to each link as the number of links goes up. Yes - that does reduce the amount transferred back to your own pages through navigational internal linking, but there is not an overall loss.
I also agree based on personal experience that having the "authoritative" outgoing links does help in ranking in the SERPs which is a heck of a lot more important than PR at this stage.

[franklin dematto]

Macro - sorry, I don't remember where these papers are. The way I would find them is by, well, uh, Googling.

Either way, I feel pretty confident that any link that Googlebot see will eat up some of the transfer PR - and so you gain absolutely nothing by using redirects. If you want to hide them from Googlebot, you need to use a cloaking startegy, like JavaScript.

does help in ranking in the SERPs which is a heck of a lot more important than PR at this stage.

Please explain - why don't you feel PR is important?

[Macro]

Please explain - why don't you feel PR is important

It's not that I don't think it's important. But from other threads here it seems that PR is not as important as it used to be. Also, I have seen a lot of low PR sites come up high in SERPS, and ahead of high PR sites.

I've read some research stuff on hubs. A lot of it is heavy reading. And plently of formulae etc thrown in.

I don't know if they'll quite consider me a hub as the outward links are not very focused on a particular keyword or topic. There are spread over a range of quite dis-similar topics. If there's any merit in having several mini-hubs then I may benefit, otherwise my best option would be to put the outbound links in js.

So, instead of transferring your PR to an external site, you now transfer it to yoursite.com/redirect.cgi?xxxxx

But if that cgi file is blocked via a robots.txt or other means does Google still transfer any PR? If the destination page was not available to visitors and not indexed by Google would Google not ignore transferring any PR out to what it sees as a "dead" destination?