11 replies to this topic

[franklin]

Problem: I just took over SEO for a company, and they have an odd issue.

They have partners all over the world point to their homepage as www.mypage.com

If you go to that page it automatically redirects to: www.mypage.com/enu/main.html

All their internal links allow users to navigate back to the homepage using this link: www.mypage.com/enu/main.html

My feeling is that this is splitting their rank.

1.) Is there a way to tell the page rank of a redirected page?

2.) Are they splitting rank, or do search engines overlook this? My client currently has a page rank of 6 on their homepage.

[incrediblehelp]

Try any of tools listed on Google to check PR:

http://www.google.co...checker&spell=1

I wouldnt not be to worried on splitting PR if you are redirecting properly.

Many websites do a redirect from the domain name to sub-directory and it doesn't seem to affect their rankings. Just try the Amazon domain name.

The question is how and why is the redirect taking place? Amazon uses a 301 permanent redirect to its sub-directory.

Why is your client doing the redirect? Is it because of the language version of the website being detected and then redirected to the proper website version?

[Michael Martinez]

There is no way to split PageRank, so your concern is not necessary. But Pagerank isn't important anyway. You shouldn't be looking at it.

[incrediblehelp]

There is no way to split PageRank, so your concern is not necessary.  But Pagerank isn't important anyway.  You shouldn't be looking at it.

I agree PR is basically un-important, but I dont agree that it is impossible to split it. Are you saying it is not possible that http://domain.com can have a different PR as http://www.domain.com?

[franklin]

OK, so I used the page rank check tool and both pages have the same rank:

PR = 6
www.mypage.com

PR = 6
www.mypage.com/enu/main.html

This leads me to believe that all is well on this site.

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The same client has a second site where a redirect wasn’t used (2 seperate pages):

1.) PR = 6
www.mypage.com

2.) PR = 4
www.mypage.com/main.html

All in site navigation goes to link # 2. All links to the homepage from the outside world go to Page # 1.

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I think that the second site needs to be corrected, but the first site is OK. Having said this, I will ask the webmaster involved in building the sites to take a look at both.

P.S. My experience is in paid search, and my SEO advice to this client is free help as a thank you for a longstanding relationship.

[incrediblehelp]

Whenever I start with a client one of the first things I look at is the internal navigation and if it needs to be changed. I usually don't freak out between absolute or relative links, but one thing is for sure I have all of them change the way they reference the home page from a relative sub-page or sub-directory to the domain itself. Also always use the / when linking to the domain i.e. www.domain.com/

[Michael Martinez]

Are you saying it is not possible that http://domain.com can have a different PR as http://www.domain.com?

Nope. I'm just saying that PageRank cannot be split. Period. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

Any URL can accrue PageRank on its own. Google can, if it elects to, treat any two URLs as one, thus combining the value of the links pointing to both URLs into one PageRank value. But the reverse does not happen. They don't split PageRank.

[Michael Martinez]

OK, so I used the page rank check tool and both pages have the same rank:

You are wasting your time. PageRank tells you nothing about relevance, and you need relevance to rank in the Search Results.

Do not confuse PageRank with SERPRank.

[ChipJohns]

Why do so many people have such a problem with this?

If you want proof do a few searches on different subjects and check the PageRank for the top ten sites or so for each of your searches. You will find that the highest PR pages are not always at the top of the serps! If serps wire based on a PR this shouldn't happen.

But it does! ...What can we conclude.????? ...PageRank doesn't matter!!!

(Pretty cool guys. I added the text but didn't include the link for *PageRank doesn't matter.* it was automattically added after I posted.) Look ! it did it again!

[Jill]

I disagree with Michael on this, and feel that you can indeed split PageRank and link popularity. I think it's really just a case of semantics however.

But if you have say yoursite.com which shows a PR of 6 and yoursite.com/index.htm with a PR of 4, then you are indeeding "splitting your PageRank." That's not really what it's doing, but it's an easy way to describe it.

You are actually not getting all the link popularity counted towards your home page that you deserve. Now, it's really the engines' problem because they don't always know that yoursite.com and yoursite.com/index.htm are the same page, but if you want all the credit your home page deserves, it's a good idea to make sure all links back to the home page use the root domain and not index.htm.

Eventually, the engines do figure it out, but why leave it up to them?

[Michael Martinez]

The PageRank algorithm doesn't provide for splitting sums into smaller amounts. So there is no way to split PageRank.

However, the core issue in this discussion is concerned with canonicity of domain names. Can two variations on the same domain name accumulate their own links (and therefore their own PageRank)? Yes.

Can Google transfer the link votes/value from one variation to the other, thus combining them? Yes.

It just doesn't go the other way. There is no way for Google to do something like that, and certainly no reason for them to do it.

All that's happening is that linkage is being split between two variations on a domain name. The PageRanks are distinct, not derivatives of a formerly unified PageRank.

That just doesn't happen.

[Jill]

All that's happening is that linkage is being split between two variations on a domain name.

Like I said, it's just semantics. I say tomayto, you say tomahto.

No sense arguing about it, because we're all saying the same thing, just in different words.