Google'sPageRank Explained andhow to make the most of it

Google'sPageRank Explained

andhow to make the most of it

 

Whatis PageRank?

PageRank is a numeric valuethat represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that whenone page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the otherpage. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page mustbe. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines howimportant the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from thevotes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when apage's PageRank is calculated.

 

PageRank is Google's way ofdeciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors thatdetermines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factorthat Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

 

From here on in, we'lloccasionally refer to PageRank as "PR".

 

Notes:

Not all links are counted byGoogle. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some linkscan cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasterscannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control whichsites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm thesite, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. Sobe careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty,and it would be unwise to link to it.

 

Howis PageRank calculated?

To calculate the PageRankfor a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are linksfrom within the site and links from outside the site.

 

       PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

 

That's the equation thatcalculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published whenPageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variationof it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as thisequation is good enough.

 

In the equation 't1 - tn'are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a pagehas and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.

 

We can think of it in asimpler way:-

 

a page's PageRank = 0.15 +0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it)

 

"share" = thelinking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

 

A page "votes" anamount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank thatit has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value* 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.

From this, we could concludethat a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a linkfrom a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that linksto yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important.The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page willreceive from it.

 

If the PageRank value differencesbetween PR1, PR2,.....PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, butmany people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are seton a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobodyoutside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are highthat the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lotmore additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level thatit did to move up from the previous PageRank level.The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from aPR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4page that has only a few outbound links.

 

Whichever scale Google uses,we can be sure of one thing. A link from another siteincreases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.

 

Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its ownPageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doingthe voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a voteaccording to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting whereeach shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the sharesthemselves aren't given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly,as we'll see later.

 

Ok so far? Good. Now we'lllook at how the calculations are actually done.

 

For a page's calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandonedcompletely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solelyon the PageRank "voted" for it by its current inbound links, whichmay have changed since the last time the page's PageRank was calculated.

 

The equation shows clearlyhow a page's PageRank is arrived at. But what isn't immediately obvious is thatit can't work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, Aand B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind.This is what happens:-

 

Step 1: Calculate page A'sPageRank from the value of its inbound links

 

Page A now has a newPageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B.But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn'tbeen worked out yet, so page A's new PageRank value is based on inaccurate dataand can't be accurate.

 

Step 2: Calculate page B'sPageRank from the value of its inbound links

 

Page B now has a newPageRank value, but it can't be accurate because the calculation used the newPageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.

 

It's a Catch 22 situation.We can't work out A's PageRank until we know B's PageRank, and we can't workout B's PageRank until we know A's PageRank.

 

Now that both pages havenewly calculated PageRank values, can't we just run the calculations again toarrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the newvalues and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be usinginaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always beinaccurate.

 

The problem is overcome byrepeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly moreaccurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because thecalculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations aresufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn't produceenough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisiely what Google doesat each update, and it's the reason why the updates take so long.

 

One thing to bear in mind isthat the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures mustthen be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page'sactual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel thePageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higherproportion of it than others.

 

NOTE:

You may come acrossexplanations of PageRank where the same equation is stated but the result of eachiteration of the calculation is added to the page's existing PageRank. The newvalue (result + existing PageRank) is then used when sharing PageRank withother pages. These explanations are wrong for the following reasons:-

 

1. They quote thesame, published equation - but then change it

from PR(A) =(1-d) + d(......) to PR(A) = PR(A) + (1-d) + d(......)

It isn't correct,and it isn't necessary.

 

2. We will be looking at howto organize links so that certain pages end up with a larger proportion of thePageRank than others. Adding to the page's existing PageRank through theiterations produces different proportions than when the equation is used aspublished. Since the addition is not a part of the published equation, theresults are wrong and the proportioning isn't accurate.

 

According to the publishedequation, the page being calculated starts from scratch at each iteration. Itrelies solely on its inbound links. The 'add to the existing PageRank' ideadoesn't do that, so its results are necessarily wrong.

 

Internallinking

Fact: A website has amaximum amount of PageRank that is distributed between its pages by internallinks.

 

The maximum PageRank in asite equals the number of pages in the site * 1. The maximum is increased byinbound links from other sites and decreased by outbound links to other sites.We are talking about the overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank ofany individual page. You don't have to take my word for it. You can reach thesame conclusion by using a pencil and paper and the equation.

 

Fact: The maximum amount ofPageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases.

 

The more pages that a sitehas, the more PageRank it has. Again, by using a pencil and paper and theequation, you can come to the same conclusion. Bear in mind that the only pagesthat count are the ones that Google knows about.

 

Fact: By linking poorly, itis possible to fail to reach the site's maximum PageRank, but it is notpossible to exceed it.

 

Poor internal linkages cancause a site to fall short of its maximum but no kind of internal linkstructure can cause a site to exceed it. The only way to increase the maximumis to add more inbound links and/or increase the number of pages in the site.

 

Cautions: Whilst Ithoroughly recommend creating and adding new pages to increase a site's totalPageRank so that it can be channeled to specific pages, there are certain typesof pages that should not be added. These are pages that are all identical orvery nearly identical and are known as cookie-cutters. Google considers them tobe spam and they can trigger an alarm that causes the pages, and possibly theentire site, to be penalized. Pages full of good content are a must.

 

What can we do with this'overall' PageRank?

 

We are going to look at someexample calculations to see how a site's PageRank can be manipulated, butbefore doing that, I need to point out that a page will be included in theGoogle index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. That's accordingto Google. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can't beincluded in the calculations.

 

For the examples, we aregoing to ignore that fact, mainly because other 'Pagerank Explained' typedocuments ignore it in the calculations, and it might be confusing whencomparing documents. The calculator operates in two modes:- Simple and Real. InSimple mode, the calculations assume that all pages are in the Google index,whether or not any other pages link to them. In Real mode the calculationsdisregard unlinked-to pages. These examples show the results as calculated in Simplemode.

 

Let's consider a 3 page site(pages A, B and C) with no links coming in from the outside. We will allocateeach page an initial PageRank of 1, although it makes no difference whether westart each page with 1, 0 or 99. Apart from a few millionths of a PageRankpoint, after many iterations the end result is always the same. Starting with 1requires fewer iterations for the PageRanks to converge to a suitable resultthan when starting with 0 or any other number. You may want to use a pencil andpaper to follow this or you can follow it with the calculator.

 

The site's maximum PageRankis the amount of PageRank in the site. In this case, we have 3 pages so thesite's maximum is 3.

 

At the moment, none of thepages link to any other pages and none link to them. If you make thecalculation once for each page, you'll find that each of them ends up with aPageRank of 0.15. No matter how many iterations you run, each page's PageRankremains at 0.15. The total PageRank in the site = 0.45, whereas it could be 3.The site is seriously wasting most of its potential PageRank.

 

Example 1

 

Now begin again with eachpage being allocated PR1. Link page A to page B and run the calculations foreach page. We end up with:

Page A = 0.15 Page B = 1 PageC = 0.15

 

Page A has "voted"for page B and, as a result, page B's PageRank has increased. This is lookinggood for page B, but it's only 1 iteration - we haven't taken account of theCatch 22 situation. Look at what happens to the figures after more iterations:

 

After 100 iterations thefigures are:

Page A = 0.15 Page B =0.2775 Page C = 0.15

 

It still looks good for pageB but nowhere near as good as it did. These figures are more realistic. Thetotal PageRank in the site is now 0.5775 - slightly better but still only afraction of what it could be.

 

NOTE:

Technically, these particular results are incorrect because of thespecial treatment that Google gives to dangling links, but they serve todemonstrate the simple calculation.

 

Example 2

Try this linkage. Link allpages to all pages. Each page starts with PR1 again. This produces:

Page A = 1 Page B = 1 Page C= 1

 

Now we've achieved themaximum. No matter how many iterations are run, each page always ends up withPR1. The same results occur by linking in a loop. E.g. A to B, B to C and C toD. View this in the calculator.

 

This has demonstrated that,by poor linking, it is quite easy to waste PageRank and by good linking, we canachieve a site's full potential. But we don't particularly want all the site'spages to have an equal share. We want one or more pages to have a larger shareat the expense of others. The kinds of pages that we might want to have thelarger shares are the index page, hub pages and pages that are optimized forcertain search terms. We have only 3 pages, so we'll channel the PageRank tothe index page - page A. It will serve to show the idea of channeling.

 

Example 3

Now try this. Link page A toboth B and C. Also link pages B and C to A. Starting with PR1 all round, after1 iteration the results are:

Page A = 1.85 Page B = 0.575  Page C = 0.575

 

and after 100 iterations,the results are:

Page A = 1.459459 Page B =0.7702703 Page C = 0.7702703

 

In both cases the totalPageRank in the site is 3 (the maximum) so none is being wasted. Also in bothcases you can see that page A has a much larger proportion of the PageRank thanthe other 2 pages. This is because pages B and C are passing PageRank to A andnot to any other pages. We have channeled a large proportion of the site'sPageRank to where we wanted it.

 

Example 4

Finally, keep the previouslinks and add a link from page C to page B. Start again with PR1 all round.After 1 iteration:

Page A = 1.425 Page B = 1 PageC = 0.575

 

By comparison to the 1iteration figures in the previous example, page A has lost some PageRank, pageB has gained some and page C stayed the same. Page C now shares its"vote" between A and B. Previously A received all of it. That's whypage A has lost out and why page B has gained. and after 100 iterations:

Page A = 1.298245     Page B = 0.9999999   Page C = 0.7017543

 

When the dust has settled,page C has lost a little PageRank because, having now shared its vote between Aand B, instead of giving it all to A, A has less to give to C in the A-->Clink. So adding an extra link from a page causes the page to lose PageRankindirectly if any of the pages that it links to return the link. If the pagesthat it links to don't return the link, then no PageRank loss would haveoccured. To make it more complicated, if the link is returned even indirectly(via a page that links to a page that links to a page etc), the page will losea little PageRank. This isn't really important with internal links, but it doesmatter when linking to pages outside the site.

 

Example 5: new pages

Adding new pagesto a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank becauseeach new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages havebeen added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We'lluse the calculator to demonstrate these.

 

Let's add 3 new pages toExample 3 [view]. Three new pages but they don't do anything for us yet. Thesmall increase in the Total, and the new pages' 0.15, are unrealistic as weshall see. So let's link them into the site.

 

Link each of the new pagesto the important page, page A [view]. Notice that the Total PageRank hasdoubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A'sPageRank has almost doubled.

 

There is one thing wrongwith this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn't get into Google'sindex, so they wouldn't add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn't pass anyPageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one otherpage. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is,surprisingly, page A [view]. You can play around with the links but, from pageA's point of view, there isn't a better place for them.

 

It is not a good idea forone page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many newpages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than oneimportant page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to andfrom the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-modelsof a site to find the best links that produce the best results for itsimportant pages.

 

Examples summary

 

You can see that, byorganising the internal links, it is possible to channel a site's PageRank toselected pages. Internal links can be arranged to suit a site's PageRank needs,but it is only useful if Google knows about the pages, so do try to ensure thatGoogle spiders them.

 

Inbound and Outbound links

 

Examples of these could begiven but it is probably clearer to read about them (below) and to 'play' withthem in the calculator.

 

Questions

 

When a page has severallinks to another page, are all the links counted?

 

E.g. if page A links once topage B and 3 times to page C, does page C receive 3/4 of page A's shareablePageRank?

 

The PageRank concept is thata page casts votes for one or more other pages. Nothing is said in the originalPageRank document about a page casting more than one vote for a single page.The idea seems to be against the PageRank concept and would certainly be opento manipulation by unrealistically proportioning votes for target pages. E.g.if an outbound link, or a link to an unimportant page, is necessary, add abunch of links to an important page to minimize the effect.

 

Since we are unlikely to geta definitive answer from Google, it is reasonable to assume that a page cancast only one vote for another page, and that additional votes for the samepage are not counted.

 

When a page links to itself,is the link counted?

 

Again, the concept is thatpages cast votes for other pages. Nothing is said in the original documentabout pages casting votes for themselves. The idea seems to be against theconcept and, also, it would be another way to manipulate the results. So, forthose reasons, it is reasonable to assume that a page can't vote for itself,and that such links are not counted.

 

Dangling links

"Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoinglinks. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight shouldbe distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these danglinglinks are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet..........Becausedangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simplyremove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After allthe PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting thingssignificantly." - extract from the original PageRank paper by Googlefounders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.

 

A dangling link is a link toa page that has no links going from it, or a link to a page that Google hasn'tindexed. In both cases Google removes the links shortly after the start of thecalculations and reinstates them shortly before the calculations are finished.In this way, their effect on the PageRank of other pages in minimal.

 

The results shown in Example1 (right diag.) are wrong because page B has no links going from it, and so thelink from page A to page B is dangling and would be removed from thecalculations. The results of the calculations would show all three pages ashaving 0.15.

 

It may suit sitefunctionality to link to pages that have no links going from them withoutlosing any PageRank from the other pages but it would be waste of potentialPageRank. Take a look at this example. The site's potential is 5 because it has5 pages, but without page E linked in, the site only has 4.15.

 

Link page A to page E andclick Calculate. Notice that the site's total has gone down very significantly.But, because the new link is dangling and would be removed from thecalculations, we can ignore the new total and assume the previous 4.15 to betrue. That's the effect of functionally useful, dangling links in the site.There's no overall PageRank loss.

 

However, some of the site'spotential total is still being wasted, so link Page E back to Page A and clickCalculate. Now we have the maximum PageRank that is possible with 5 pages.Nothing is being wasted.

 

Although it may befunctionally good to link to pages within the site without those pages linkingout again, it is bad for PageRank. It is pointless wasting PageRankunnecessarily, so always make sure that every page in the site links out to atleast one other page in the site.

 

Inbound links

 

Inbound links (links intothe site from the outside) are one way to increase a site's total PageRank. Theother is to add more pages. Where the links come from doesn't matter. Googlerecognizes that a webmaster has no control over other sites linking into asite, and so sites are not penalized because of where the links come from.There is an exception to this rule but it is rare and doesn't concern thisarticle. It isn't something that a webmaster can accidentally do.

 

The linking page's PageRankis important, but so is the number of links going from that page. For instance,if you are the only link from a page that has a lowly PR2, you will receive aninjection of 0.15 + 0.85(2/1) = 1.85 into your site, whereas a link from a PR8page that has another 99 links from it will increase your site's PageRank by0.15 + 0.85(7/100) = 0.2095. Clearly, the PR2 link is much better - or is it?See here for a probable reason why this is not the case.

 

Once the PageRank isinjected into your site, the calculations are done again and each page'sPageRank is changed. Depending on the internal link structure, some pages'PageRank is increased, some are unchanged but no pages lose any PageRank.

 

It is beneficial to have theinbound links coming to the pages to which you are channeling your PageRank. APageRank injection to any other page will be spread around the site through theinternal links. The important pages will receive an increase, but not as muchof an increase as when they are linked to directly. The page that receives theinbound link, makes the biggest gain.

 

It is easy to think of oursite as being a small, self-contained network of pages. When we do the PageRankcalculations we are dealing with our small network. If we make a link toanother site, we lose some of our network's PageRank, and if we receive a link,our network's PageRank is added to. But it isn't like that. For the PageRankcalculations, there is only one network - every page that Google has in itsindex. Each iteration of the calculation is done on the entire network and noton individual websites.

 

Because the entire networkis interlinked, and every link and every page plays its part in each iterationof the calculations, it is impossible for us to calculate the effect of inboundlinks to our site with any realistic accuracy.

 

Outbound links

 

Outbound links are a drainon a site's total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try toensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages ateach end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages,reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosingwhere to exchange links.

 

When PageRank leaks from asite via a link to another site, all the pages in the internal link structureare affected. (This doesn't always show after just 1 iteration). The page thatyou link out from makes a difference to which pages suffer the most loss.Without a program to perform the calculations on specific link structures, itis difficult to decide on the right page to link out from, but thegeneralization is to link from the one with the lowest PageRank.

 

Many websites need tocontain some outbound links that are nothing to do with PageRank.Unfortunately, all 'normal' outbound links leak PageRank. But there are'abnormal' ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. PageRankis leaked when Google recognizes a link to another site. The answer is to uselinks that Google doesn't recognize or count. These include form actions andlinks contained in javascript code.

 

Form actions

A form's 'action' attributedoes not need to be the url of a form parsing script. It can point to any htmlpage on any site. Try it.

 

Example:

<formname="myform"action="http://www.domain.com/somepage.html">

<a href="javascript:document.myform.submit()">Clickhere</a>

 

To be really sneaky, theaction attribute could be in some javascript code rather than in the form tag,and the javascript code could be loaded from a 'js' file stored in a directorythat is barred to Google's spider by the robots.txt file.

 

Javascript

Example: <ahref="javascript:goto('wherever')">Click here</a>

 

Like the form action, it issneaky to load the javascript code, which contains the urls, from a seperate'js' file, and sneakier still if the file is stored in a directory that isbarred to googlebot by the robots.txt file.

 

The "rel"attribute

As of 18th January 2005,Google, together with other search engines, is recognising a new attribute tothe anchor tag. The attribute is "rel", and it is used as follows:-

 

<ahref="http://www.domain.com/somepage.html"rel="nofollow">link text</a>

 

The attribute tells Googleto ignore the link completely. The link won't help the target page's PageRank,and it won't help its rankings. It is as though the link doesn't exist. Withthis attribute, there is no longer any need for javascript, forms, or any othermethod of hiding links from Google.

 

So how much additionalPageRank do we need to move up the toolbar?

First, let me explain inmore detail why the values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actualPageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, thebillions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So thetotal PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web * 1, whichequals a lot of PageRank spread around the web.

 

The Google toolbar range isfrom 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn't believed to be aPageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actualPageRanks on the web into 10 parts - each part is represented by a value asshown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overallrange a page's PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbersin the toolbar are just labels.

 

Whether or not the overallrange is divided into 10 equal parts is a matter for debate - Google aren'tsaying. But because it is much harder to move up a toolbar point at the higherend than it is at the lower end, many people (including me) believe that thedivisions are based on a logarithmic scale, or something very similar, ratherthan the equal divisions of a linear scale.

 

Let's assume that it is alogarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages tomove a site's important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages tomove it up another point, 1000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to thenext, and so on. That's why moving up at the lower end is much easier that atthe higher end.

 

In reality, the base isunlikely to be 10. Some people think it is around the 5 or 6 mark, and maybeeven less. Even so, it still gets progressively harder to move up a toolbarpoint at the higher end of the scale.

 

Note that as the number ofpages on the web increases, so does the total PageRank on the web, and as thetotal PageRank increases, the positions of the divisions in the overall scalemust change. As a result, some pages drop a toolbar point for no 'apparent'reason. If the page's actual PageRank was only just above a division in thescale, the addition of new pages to the web would cause the division to move upslightly and the page would end up just below the division. Google's index isalways increasing and they re-evaluate each of the pages on more or less amonthly basis. It's known as the "Google dance". When the dance isover, some pages will have dropped a toolbar point. A number of new pages mightbe all that is needed to get the point back after the next dance.

 

The toolbar value is a goodindicator of a page's PageRank but it only indicates that a page is in acertain range of the overall scale. One PR5 page could be just above the PR5division and another PR5 page could be just below the PR6 division - almost awhole division (toolbar point) between them.

 

Tips

Domain names and Filenames

 

To a spider,www.domain.com/, domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html anddomain.com/index.html are different urls and, therefore, different pages.Surfers arrive at the site's home page whichever of the urls are used, butspiders see them as individual urls, and it makes a difference when working outthe PageRank. It is better to standardize the url you use for the site's homepage. Otherwise each url can end up with a different PageRank, whereas all ofit should have gone to just one url.

 

If you think about it, howcan a spider know the filename of the page that it gets back when requestingwww.domain.com/ ? It can't. The filename could be index.html, index.htm,index.php, default.html, etc. The spider doesn't know. If you link toindex.html within the site, the spider could compare the 2 pages but that seemsunlikely. So they are 2 urls and each receives PageRank from inbound links.Standardizing the home page's url ensures that the Pagerank it is due isn't sharedwith ghost urls.

 

Example: Go to my UKHolidays and UK Holiday Accommodation site - how's that for a nice piece oflink text ;). Notice that the url in the browser's address bar contains"www.". If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you will see thatthe page has PR5. Now remove the "www." part of the url and get thepage again. This time it has PR1, and yet they are the same page. Actually, thePageRank is for the unseen frameset page.

 

When this article was firstwritten, the non-www URL had PR4 due to using different versions of the linkURLs within the site. It had the effect of sharing the page's PageRank betweenthe 2 pages (the 2 versions) and, therefore, between the 2 sites. That's notthe best way to do it. Since then, I've tidied up the internal linkages and gotthe non-www version down to PR1 so that the PageRank within the site mostlystays in the "www." version, but there must be a site somewhere thatlinks to it without the "www." that's causing the PR1.

 

Imagine the page,www.domain.com/index.html. The index page contains links to several relativeurls; e.g. products.html and details.html. The spider sees those urls aswww.domain.com/products.html and www.domain.com/details.html. Now let's add anabsolute url for another page, only this time we'll leave out the"www." part - domain.com/anotherpage.html. This page links back tothe index.html page, so the spider sees the index pages asdomain.com/index.html. Although it's the same index page as the first one, to aspider, it is a different page because it's on a different domain. Now lookwhat happens. Each of the relative urls on the index page is also differentbecause it belongs to the domain.com/ domain. Consequently, the link stuctureis wasting a site's potential PageRank by spreading it between ghost pages.

 

Adding new pages

 

There is a possible negativeeffect of adding new pages. Take a perfectly normal site. It has some inboundlinks from other sites and its pages have some PageRank. Then a new page isadded to the site and is linked to from one or more of the existing pages. Thenew page will, of course, aquire PageRank from the site's existing pages. Theeffect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or moreof the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page makinggains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is theloss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to benoticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.

 

So, although adding new pagesdoes increase the total PageRank within the site, some of the site's pages willlose PageRank as a result. The answer is to link new pages is such a way withinthe site that the important pages don't suffer, or add sufficient new pages tomake up for the effect (that can sometimes mean adding a large number of newpages), or better still, get some more inbound links.

 

Miscellaneous

 

The Google toolbar

If you have the Googletoolbar installed in your browser, you will be used to seeing each page's PageRankas you browse the web. But all isn't always as it seems. Many pages that Googledisplays the PageRank for haven't been indexed in Google and certainly don'thave any PageRank in their own right. What is happening is that one or morepages on the site have been indexed and a PageRank has been calculated. ThePageRank figure for the site's pages that haven't been indexed is allocated onthe fly - just for your toolbar. The PageRank itself doesn't exist.

 

It's important to know thisso that you can avoid exchanging links with pages that really don't have anyPageRank of their own. Before making exchanges, search for the page on Googleto make sure that it is indexed.

 

Sub-directories

Some people believe thatGoogle drops a page's PageRank by a value of 1 for each sub-directory levelbelow the root directory. E.g. if the value of pages in the root directory isgenerally around 4, then pages in the next directory level down will begenerally around 3, and so on down the levels. Other people (including me) don'taccept that at all. Either way, because some spiders tend to avoid deepsub-directories, it is generally considered to be beneficial to keep directorystructures shallow (directories one or two levels below the root).

 

ODP and Yahoo!

It used to be thought thatGoogle gave a Pagerank boost to sites that are listed in the Yahoo! and ODP(a.k.a. DMOZ) directories, but these days general opinion is that they don't.There is certainly a PageRank gain for sites that are listed in thosedirectories, but the reason for it is now thought to be this:-

 

Google spiders thedirectories just like any other site and their pages have decent PageRank andso they are good inbound links to have. In the case of the ODP, Google'sdirectory is a copy of the ODP directory. Each time that sites are added anddropped from the ODP, they are added and dropped from Google's directory whenthey next update it. The entry in Google's directory is yet another good,PageRank boosting, inbound link. Also, the ODP data is used for searches on amyriad of websites - more inbound links!

 

Listings in the ODP are freebut, because sites are reviewed by hand, it can take quite a long time to getin. The sooner a working site is submitted, the better. For tips on submittingto DMOZ, see this this DMOZ article.

 

Comments and suggestions

Comments and suggestions arewelcomed. Please post in the forum if you have any.

 

Further information andresources

# Another PageRank Explainedarticle (by Ian Rogers): here

# Internet marketingarticles, tips, tricks and secrets: here