pagerank arguement...

[michael_gersitz]

On another forum, someone was saying something that was untrue about PR.. so I showed them your water analogy....


Outgoing links hurt!

No on a page by page basis though. An outgoing link will do nothing directly bad to the page it is on.

However on a site wide basis it removes PR.

Say you have a page with two links on it, one an internal link within your site, the other to a third party external site.

50% of the PR goes to your page in the same site, 50% goes to the other site.

Now take away that external link.

100% of the PR goes to the page on your same site.

On a site wide basis think of PR like water and sites like buckets. Internal links do nothing but move water from one part of the bucket to another. External links take some of your PR and move it to another bucket, the overall water level in your bucket decreases.

The PR of the site you're linking to doesn't matter (unless you're doing a link exchange). If you are doing a link exchange they you'll want to get more water back than what you are giving (or equal amounts anyways).

And they said...


I'm sorry, this is just simply not true. Here's the proof:

1) Go to dmoz.org. Notice they have Pagerank 9.
2) Scroll down to the bottom. Notice how many externel links they have: over 3.8 Million
3) Go to Google and notice how many sites link to dmoz.org. On Google search for 'link:dmoz.org' The result: 218,000

Now, if your logic were true, dmoz.org should have a Pagerank of 0.

Pagerank is not like water. It is a very complicated formula for determing what Google considers to be a popular website.

Can you clear this up?

[GCT13]

2) Scroll down to the bottom. Notice how many externel links they have: over 3.8 Million

3) Go to Google and notice how many sites link to dmoz.org. On Google search for 'link:dmoz.org' The result: 218,000


Google's "link" displays only links from pages of PR of 4+ (or something like that). It doesn't display all the links. Do the same thing on AllTheWeb.com (which does display all the links), and you get: 7,794,140 incoming links, twice as many as their outgoing links.

Also, all links are not created equally, and dmoz.org certainly gets some very strong links. One single link could potentially have more weight than a thousand links combined. What would bring more benefit to your site: a link from Yahoo's homepage or from the site in my signature? :)

Could you post the url of the thread in question?

[Chris]

Heh... Ya "look at DMOZ.org" is really an air-tight response.

Look at Yahoo, a PR of 10, ergo all websites that start with a "Y" have a PR of 10.

Anyone who doesn't think outgoing links hurt has no understanding of PR whatsoever.

Point them to Brin and Page's thesis, have them read it.

Then it is a matter of algebra.

How much PR a link contributes to a page is found by dividing the PR of the linking-to site by the number of links on the page and then multiplying by the dampening factor.

To make it easier to understand, remove the dampening factor from the equation.

So we have.

linkPR = SitePR/NumLinks

If the SitePR is 10 (the actual value, not the score reported in the toolbar), and the number of links is 10, then the link gives "1."

Once you establish this it is easy to show how outgoing links hurt.

Pretend 8 of the links on the page are internal and 2 are external.

The total amount of PR sent to external sites is 2, and the total amount sent back to other pages on your site is 8.

Now add 3 outgoing links.

The total amount of PR sent to external sites is 3.85, the total amount of PR sent back to other pages on your site is 6.25.

Is 8 > 6.25?

If the answer is yes, then outgoing links hurt on a site wide basis.

For a more indepth explanation, with even more math, that includes the dampening factor:

http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/

In the end it comes down to 8 and 6.25. Which is greater?

[michael_gersitz]

Thank you.