How Many Backlinks?

[Mike Empuria]

I've just read a thread started by Dural (http://www.websitepublisher.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4318) in which (s)he said that there were only 1000 incoming links in the site with a PR of 6. I have a site with about 3 incoming! How many links makes a difference and is there a ranking system e.g 100 = PR1, 500 = PR4?

[dc dalton]

I honestly dont believe its the number at all. It's a combnation of the quality of those links, the linking site's PR and the relevency of the linking site to your website.

Good links are always vitally important and just getting a "bunch of links" from anywhere doesn't always work like you might think.

[michael_gersitz]

There is no set standard for incoming links towards PR. It is the quality of the links and the PR of sites that are linking to you. Remember, google only shows pages with a PR of 4 or higher that is linking to the pages to.

[Chris]

PR is based on total weight of incoming links, not total number of incoming links. More is better but 1 PR10 incoming link can be better than thousands of PR1 incoming links.

To get the PR passed through a link divide the PR of the linking page by the number of links on that page.

So if a PR6 page has 10 links on it then each link is getting PR6/10.

Now, Google's toolbar scale is not linear, it is on a curve. The base, according to my experiments, is roughly a 5. So a PR2 is 5x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR3 is 25x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR 4 is 125x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR5 is 600x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR6 is 3000x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR7 is 15000x harder to get than a PR1, etc etc etc.

Also, the scale is very general, there could be a huge difference between a low 5 and a high 5 but they'll both be shown as 5.

[john190]

The more quality of your backlinks and the higher the PR of the sites where your backlinks are shown on the better.

[Masetek]

PR is based on total weight of incoming links, not total number of incoming links. More is better but 1 PR10 incoming link can be better than thousands of PR1 incoming links.

To get the PR passed through a link divide the PR of the linking page by the number of links on that page.

So if a PR6 page has 10 links on it then each link is getting PR6/10.

Now, Google's toolbar scale is not linear, it is on a curve. The base, according to my experiments, is roughly a 5. So a PR2 is 5x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR3 is 25x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR 4 is 125x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR5 is 600x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR6 is 3000x harder to get than a PR1, and a PR7 is 15000x harder to get than a PR1, etc etc etc.

Also, the scale is very general, there could be a huge difference between a low 5 and a high 5 but they'll both be shown as 5.

That's a very good explanation.