Subject: Page Rank
Observations:
1. The AU HP used to have PR6 & all pages 1 level down had PR5. The drop to the current 5 coincided with the addition of multiple links from the HP & a possible revision to Googles PR algorithm – the latter deduced retrospectively by those who obsess about PR. The dynamic links should not “leak 2 PR however.
2. Links direct from the HP generally should have a higher PR than those 2, 3 or 4 clicks away but their PR depends on the HP PR plus any inward links from other sites. If a page 3 or more clicks from the HP has more important inward links (re relevance & PR) it should have a higher PR than one at the same level without such links.
3. If the HP PR were to get back to that level or above, that increase would be passed down the hierarchy.
4. The PR value of links from any page is shared amongst those it links to. NB. The number of outward links should not alter the PR of the page they are on. (Unless they are invisible - but spam is not the issue here.)
5. Individual page’s PageRank’s are calculated from multiple factors - mostly off the page – currently the most influential in increasing PR are considered to be:
§ A) Links from “important sites” – generally PR 7 or above & not located on the same server
§ B) The number of outward links from the page linking in to the individual page.
6. PR is applied to the result of analysis of all the on page components - this calculation determines position in search results. NB. PR is a multiplier not an addition. If all other factors eg phrase match, keyword density etc = zero, PR will be zero.
7. The only time SERPS are presented in PR order is in the Google directory, for the basic “search all of Google” results a site with PR1 or 2 can appear above those with higher PR if they are more relevant to the query & have links from “important sites.”
8. PageRank is under continuous pressure & change. The original academic papers with the algorithm are available but will have been much altered meanwhile. Google say: “We've got serious problems. Like developing efficient implementations for large-scale mathematical problems, such as running Google's Pagerank™ algorithm on a graph of 3 billion nodes and 20 billion edges. Or harnessing the computational resources of more than 10,000 computers to solve large-scale problems.” http://www.google.com/codejam/
Conclusions:
1. If the HP PR were to be increased by an aggressive linking campaign all the site would benefit.
2. It is better to put time into increasing the HP on-page relevancy & inwards links with the resulting overall increase in PR than trying to manipulate PR artificially.
3. Only one new site need feature on the HP & be linked to a “What’s New” page keeping the HP on page elements focused & keyword rich so that any increase in the HP PR is passed down the hierarchy.
4. The main consideration when doing anything to a site is to ask: “is this going to improve user experience or is it designed to artificially influence SERPS.” If the latter, it will most likely be penalized now or some time in the future.
5. PR is only a gauge – not very accurate & it is most definitely against Googles TOS to sell it in any way. So is there any need to monitor every page by hacking the toolbar, unless you want to break Googles TOS & risk exclusion whilst artificially inflating clients PRs & then take the flak when it eventually settles back to its objective PR.
6. Use static links where you want to feed PR to a page, dynamic if you do not want it to leak to a specific page. This concentrates PR on the pages you want it on. Example - static link from HP to site map (cats), dynamic links to affiliates.
References
PageRank Uncovered Chris Ridings
http://www.supportforums.org/PageRank.pdf
Of special note:
§ P2 Definition of PageRank
§ P8 reflexive nature of PR
§ P9 Essential need for on page factors
§ P11 Combining PR off-page factors & on-page non-PR factors
§ P13 - 17 How PR is calculated & convergence
§ P23 Controlling PR & influencing results with links & navigation structure
§ P34 What Google says
§ P36 PR named after Larry Page (joke?)
§ P36 “Mining PR data from the Google Toolbar is against Google’s TOS”
§ P45 example 20 – boosting an entire sites PR
Review of the revised PageRank Uncovered version above:
fantomNews - the ultimate search engine optimization know how on fantomaster.com! Archives - 2003-09-23: "fantomTip 'PageRank Uncovered', New Edition (ver. 3.0)
The Google PageRank Algorithm and How It Works
http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
Critique of Chris Ridings original version of “PageRank Explained: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about PageRank” below
PageRank Explained: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about PageRank
http://web.archive.org/web/20020127121041/http://www.goodlookingcooking.co.uk/PageRank.pdf
Page rank calculator: http://www.markhorrell.com/seo/pagerank.asp
Dynamic linking techniques:
http://www.academywebspecialists.com/newsletters/0603.html#rohde
Start of the debate over the Searchking/ Google lawsuit re selling pagerank: http://www.fantomaster.com/fafnissue0015.html
Extra links if you still want more: http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
EXAMPLE GREYED OUT PAGES
http://www.totaltravel.com/travel/sa/kangarooisland/
https://www.totaltravel.com/cardbuy.asp#
Subject: New sites feature
Google spiders our HP once every few days.
When it does, anything that is DIRECTLY linked from the HP gets a
spidering and hence a PR boost. From what I can see, anything that has
(ever) been linked from the HP (top picks, the guides down the right,
etc) instantly gets awarded a minimum PR2. Beauty is, even if they only
get awarded the PR boost once, it'll stick indefinately; Google only
checks its lower scoring pages once every few months.
Lets put a 'new sites' section on the HP, under the picks section,
linking all new sites added in the past week. That'll help.
We also need a guide 'spotlight' too, rotated once a week, directly
linking all those guide writeups that E puts a lot of work into.
I'll have to suss out a way of hacking into the google toolbar so we can
monitor our FP and guide page PR levels in the database. Taken a bit of
a look at it, looks doable. The ones that havent got a PR we
automatically whack up on the HP until they do, bit by bit. Keep working
through that and sooner or later every page on our whole site will get a
decent PR ;-)
posted by Jen @ 9:31 AM
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