Hurt PR by linking to a PR0 site?

[jady]

Can you hurt your own PR by linking to a PR0 site?

Thanks for the info..

[fathom]

In Google eyes, you are voking that a "potential" spammed site is of great interest to Google's users.

So yes it is more likely that a link from your site to an exiting PRO site will result in a PRO to your page and quite possibly to your site.

Recommend if you want to limit PR risk develop a new page with only inbound links from the rest of your site (no other outlink links to any of your other pages) and test results first.

Since PageRank is given to pages the effects would only be apparent to the new page and not the rest of your web site.

Then just delete the page if PR0 is transferred.

[jady]

Thanks for the information Fathom - sounds like a good technique to be absolutely safe.

All links we look for are relevant such as regional or same "field" - we also stay clear of link farms.

When I see a PR0 site I wonder....

[fathom]

It obvious that you (your site itself) is not a link farm and many sites you look at (with PR0) are probably not link farms either just uninformed businesses that don't understand how most "excellent deals" can hurt them.

Sites that you decide to link to may well be open to improvement.

A suggestion of improvement (or maybe for a little fee) provides dividends in more ways than one!

What if the cause of PR0 was removed... what would your return be then?

Many PR0 sites could actually be a goldmine for you if rectified!

A thought anyway!

[lazyz]

Knowing why a site is PR0 is the issue and can be tricky. I've linked to PR0 sites that were simply PR0 because they were new. I was simply simply sharing some page rank. On the other hand, if you link to a PR0 site that is being penalized for what ever reason, you stand a good chance of being penalized also. Sometimes you can lift the penalty by removing the offending link but you could also be stuck with the PR0 blues for a long time.

[Mardi_Gras]

lazyz - new sites don't get "PR0," they get a greyed out toolbar, and a message that says "this site is not currently ranked by Google."

That's "no page ranking," as opposed to PR0, which is a ranking of zero. To the best of my knowledge, PRO is only given as a penalty.

[rogerd]

My guess is that there are some tests applied beyond a single link to a PR0 site. It might be a percentage of links test, a number of PR0 links, or some other factor.

If not, the whole web would be PR0 pretty soon. I had a site go PR0 that had hundreds of external links. If each of those sites went PR0, all of the sites that linked to THEM - tens of thousands? - would go PR0, and so on. PR0 may be a virus of sorts, but infection may take more than a single exposure.

[brotherhood of LAN]

>>That's "no page ranking," as opposed to PR0, which is a ranking of zero. To the best of my knowledge, PRO is only given as a penalty.

If you are meaning when the toolbar is white, as I believe you are....

It's possible to have a natural PR0 (im sure you already know)...where the site has a PR2 for example...and pages 2 folders deep are PR0..i.e. they are not penalised, just their PR ranking is horribly poor

[rogerd]

Here's a scary thought: could linking to a penalized, but not PR0, site cause a problem? I never used to check the PR of most links I set up since I did so for reasons of link relevance and visitor interest, not PR. Now I do check more carefully, but it occurred to me that a PR4 site could be a regular PR4 site, or a PR6 site carrying a penalty. Just in case life wasn't complicated enough...

[fathom]

The risk is there but like anything else the rewards can be many. I always look for content and then look at PR. Limit PR risk by developing a new page for PR0 page with only inbound links to it and test results first.

Since PageRank is given to pages the effects would only be apparent to the new page and not the rest of the web site.

Then delete the page if PR0 is transferred and if I still want the linkage I start discussing the problem with the owner.