5 replies to this topic

[danstelter]

I have read a few articles on how PageRank works and whatnot, and while it is not everything, is there any advantage or disadvantage as to the number of links I place in my resource box on article sites? Some sites keep you to 1 and some let me do 4, and I do make sure that all sites I now post to are DOFOLLOW. Thoughts everyone?

[Jill]

In terms of traditional PageRank, the more links on a page, the less "vote" each link gets as it's spread around between them all.

[seoseattle]

In terms of traditional PageRank, the more links on a page, the less "vote" each link gets as it's spread around between them all.

So regrading the original question. If I were to use the same domain but with two URLs, is it that each will receive 50 percent of the link juice? What if it were two URLs pointing to two different domains?

[Michael Martinez]

So regrading the original question. If I were to use the same domain but with two URLs, is it that each will receive 50 percent of the link juice? What if it were two URLs pointing to two different domains?

PageRank is calculated on a document-by-document basis, attempting to measure citations between peer documents. So given three documents (A,B,C) where A contains 2 links to B and 1 link to C, the PageRank formula calls for the two links to B to be "normalized" (treated as if they are a single link). Hence, the PageRank that document A may confer is divided equally between documents B and C.

It does not matter where documents B and C reside. In the original, classic PageRank formula the location of the documents did not matter.

In the more than 10 years since PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has implemented many filters and found new ways to extend its PageRank methodology. No one outside of Google can tell you for sure exactly how it works. Nothing will show you the exact Google PageRank for any document.

As a rule of thumb, you may want to assume that some documents won't receive PageRank because they don't pass certain filters.

As a rule of thumb, you may want to assume that some documents don't PASS PageRank because they don't pass certain filters.

As a rule of thumb, you may want to assume that as long as you don't violate Google's guidelines your documents should be able to receive and pass PageRank, although you may need to wait for your documents to obtain a little age and for the links pointing to your documents to obtain a little age.

People speculate on why age might matter but ultimately it's all about Google's quality control algorithms trying to ensure that only legitimate, informational pages receiving value.

I don't mean this in a bad way but it doesn't sound like you're ready to take on PageRank theory. If you think in terms of managing visitor experience and creating good pathways through a Web site, you'll probably accomplish most if not all of what you want to do with search engine optimization. Don't think in terms of PageRank. Think in terms of managing how easily people can move through a Web site. Think in terms of only linking out freely to sites that will be of interest to people visiting the site. Think in terms of only obtaining helpful visibility-creating and traffic-passing links from relevant Web sites.

The PageRank usually follows along.

[Hic]

Hi,
I feel a little uncomfortable to post after such a great post .. Thank you Michael ..


But in the same time, I need to understand something because I'm confused ..

I'll take an example to illustrate this ..
If I have an article in EA for example, the article page has 100 outbound links, 98 for internal EA pages, and two for my website.
Did you mean that every link of mine get 25% of PR juice ? and every link to an internal EA page get 50/98 % PR juice ?

thanks for answering.

[Randy]

Did you mean that every link of mine get 25% of PR juice ? and every link to an internal EA page get 50/98 % PR juice ?

No and No. And I have no clue where you came up with those percentages. It looks like you're extrapolating Michael's example of two linked pages and trying to apply it to considerably more links. If this were true, in your example each source page would be passing far more PageRank than it possessed, which just doesn't happen. Also I'm not sure where you or why you're apparently making a differentiation between internal and external links.

In your example there is a page with 100 links. 2 external links and 98 internal links.

So whatever percentage of PageRank of the original or source page that's available to get passed to the linked pages (and it's not 100% because there is a dampening factor, but nobody outside of Google knows the true percentage) will be split evenly between those 100 links.

So if we disregard the dampening factor and consider the PageRank available to be passed 100% of the New PageRank calculation, each of your 100 links would get 1% of this New PageRank.