Do external links drain PageRank?
-
Example: A page has 100 links, 90 internal links and 10 external links. The page has a Google internal PR of 1000.
The question is: Is the pagerank that flows to the internal links being calculated taking into account all links on the page (internal + external) or only the 90 internal links? E.g. is the PR that flows to the internal links 1000/100 or 1000/90? Are links to external sites "votes" that do not affect the internal PR flow?
Disclaimer: I understand that the maths behind the PR algo are more complex. This simplified example only serves to explain my question.
-
Agreed.
I believe it is important to have a "natural" link scheme in order to rank well. Sites that only receive but don't give might look unnatural. There must be some kind of "reward" in Google's algorithm for sites that link out to relevant, quality resources.
-
Yes, I agree that it cannot be in Google's interest to "penalize" a site for linking out to high quality, relevant resources. Google's algorithm is based on sites linking to each other so why should they discourage people to do that. So, thumbs up for high quality, relevant, editorial, ext. links; thumbs down for low quality ext. links.
-
Ah, the classic unanswerable question.
Many people have asked - and many people have guessed at the answer. There are numerous ways people have approached this "problem" - some nofollow outbound links, some use javascript to hide the links entirely from bots.
I keep coming back to the advice - what would you do if there were no search engines? Building your site to make sense for people is still the advice that google offers.
Personally, I like linking out to relelvant topical sites from my ecommerce sites. I'm not being stingy with links to helpful places. I do however nofollow all my comments - for obvious reasons.
-
Dear Florakel,
Google clearly mentioned couple of times that PR will be distributed equally to all links.
so to go back to your math, PR will be divided by 100 (1000/100). I encourage to link out to authoritative sites, because it will also tells google to which neighberhood you belong to.
-
According to your example, external links drain page rank.
Every link, whether internal or external gets the same juice to it.
Theoretically
EDIT: Better show my working since it didn't save last time
![😕](https://moz.com/community/q/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=4jds23d1a2r ":\")
Whiteboard Friday - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-juice-is-loose
No Follow advice (but has nice diagrams to help you understand) - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
Bonus thoughts - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagerank-link-patterns-the-new-flow-of-link-juice
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Header/Menu Links
Hey there, I seem to have heard mixed results on this. We have a LOT of pages that we are trying to tell google are important. Does it make that big of a difference if those pages are linked in the homepage/header menu? Or mega menu for example? We are essentially a review site, so we potentially have thousands of links that could be implemented into the menu. Thoughts are greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | HashtagHustler0 -
Site Wide Links
Howdy Moz! So our agency has been around for long enough to have a few sites we've built that have our credit in their footer resulting in a site wide link. Mostly just our name. We've heard that Google does not particularly like site wide links, should we go through and remove some of these old links?
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia0 -
Transfer Blog From External Domain
Hi All I am in stages of transferring a blog. We currently have partial manual penalty for unnatural links, and we received sample links of our own blog, which happened to be originally setup on another domain. e.g. example.co.uk and the blogs hosted on exampleblog.co.uk - the only way these were linked were through anchor text in each and every blog - so it's clear why this has been picked up. We are now going to transfer these across to our actual domain. Around 60% of the blogs had no meat, so we have pruned through these. What is the best solution; Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect and 404 pages with no meat OR Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect the others to Example.co.uk/Blogs Thanks Tom
On-Page Optimization | | TomPryor830 -
Linking Out To External Sites
Hi, All If I have created a (website, logo, email campaign) for a client and written an article about it with screen shots on my website and link to them with a (do-follow) link how does Google see the (do-follow) link? Regards to the sites they have one link in the footer on the home page, which is a (do-follow) back to our site. Also, the websites are not in my Niche.
On-Page Optimization | | deskjet0 -
Ecommerce- Keyword use in Product links on Category page
I'm wondering how Keyword use in Product links on Category pages can affect a pages rank? I have 1 site where this seems to be an issue but not on all categories. For this site, a site: keyword search ranks the category page as no.1 in the SERPS but a non-site: search shows 1 of the many products within the category as the highest ranking page (currently 20 in google) on this site. This product is probably the least likely to generate a conversion due to it's cost so this is less than ideal. The plural search of the keyword shows the category page and it ranks higher than the keyword itself (currently 9 in google) Category name and URL = keyword. The category is paginated with 12 products per page. Product URL and anchor text is brand-model-type (where type = keyword) I'd like to keep the product URLs and anchors as they are if I can as they are well searched terms themselves but I want to optimize a category page to rank for the keyword itself. Have any of you overcome a similar issue? Would adding more text to the category page dilute the issue?
On-Page Optimization | | MarcOZ0 -
400 error - Phone number link.
I am getting 400 errors for all my pages that have a phone number with a link to Skype etc on click, is this a genuine issue or am I ok? How do I resolve this? Any bright ideas, here is an example of the issue - http://www.arts1.co.uk/5-reasons-to-choose-arts1 There are pages of these and I am not sure what to do? Many Thanks James Grimsey
On-Page Optimization | | jamesgrimsey0 -
Will adding affiliate links negatively affect my SEO?
I'm thinking of signing up to a couple of affiliate programs related to my industry. Will adding affiliate links at the bottom of articles for example negatively affect my seo? I intend to have lots of useful content on my site and not just affililate links.
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Problem with left navigation links on an e-commerce site diluting pagerank
I'm trying to decide how to deal with left navigation links on my e-commerce website diluting the amount of link juice passed to other links on the page. Any suggestions? Only options I can think of are: Nofollow the links use javascript (I'm assuming googlebots are still able to find these) Leave them as they are as followed links
On-Page Optimization | | Ralzaider0
