Bigger Site, Lower PageRank

Here is a thought...

Perhaps it is obvious or possibly a well-known fact. As a site grows, I
believe it has tendencies to have its PageRank depleted unless it manages
to keep expanding. Why?

First of all, inbound links are distributed over a larger number of pages,
some of which are islands. Moreover, imagine the following scenario:

Site example.org has 2 pages that are linked (internally) from its main
page. Each of these two pages links /back/ to the main page and also
contains an external link. What if that front page contained 10 such
internal links including external links within? 'Energy' dilution and
depletion due to external links, right? Would this not motivate
preservation of links whereby people use redirections like
example.org/go.php to avoid loss of PageRank? I see this happening already,
but people I have contacted on the matter stick to denial. One of them,
whose opinion I highly value, said that he want to track outbound traffic.
Is it not as bad and narrow-minded academics who cite themselves and their
close friends?

Conclusion: When judging sites based on their PageRank, perhaps it is worth
adding the factor of size? Perhaps traffic ranks, e.g. Netscarft and Alexa,
are worth counting too?

Implications: site that use scale to dominate SERP's might divert attention
to wrong pages that market them badly. This discourages Web growth, which
is a no-no.

Roy

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

Site example.org has 2 pages that are linked (internally) from its main
page. Each of these two pages links /back/ to the main page and also
contains an external link. What if that front page contained 10 such
internal links including external links within? 'Energy' dilution and
depletion due to external links, right?

You are talking about a site with absolutely flat structure, that is: the
homepage links to all the pages of the site. In reality, especially on a
large site, the homepage would only link to a fixed number of
"sub-homepages" that in effect act as home pages for their respective
sections of the site. Those pages receive all the PR benefit. Also, most
external links (though obviously not all) are located on peripheral pages
that only get a tiny fraction of the initial front page’s page rank being
located behind one or two internal links from the front page. So, there is
always a PR 'leak', but it is normally negligibly small. It also means
that if you managed to get linked from a website, you get so little
benefit unless you're linked to from a front page or at the very least
behind only one link from the front page.

Would this not motivate preservation of links whereby people use
redirections like
example.org/go.php to avoid loss of PageRank?

Don’t forget ignorance, too. I just started a topic here yesterday whereby
I have found that I was accidentally sending all outbound traffic from a
site through a script in /cgi-bin/ that was disallowed to robots.

Conclusion: When judging sites based on their PageRank, perhaps it is
worth adding the factor of size? Perhaps traffic ranks, e.g. Netscarft and
Alexa, are worth counting too?

The size factor adds automatically by the virtue of number of links to the
site’s homepage. The search engines suppose to distinguish between
internal and external links, therefore they know the size of the site.
Netscarft? (Netcraft?) I’m not familiar with, but please don’t add Alexa
rank to anything. It’s hard to find less distorted site rank than Alexa’s.
Your site ranks will then depend on Alexa’s marketing efforts to spread
their toolbar, which is then blocked by most anti-spam software.

Implications: site that use scale to dominate SERP's might divert
attention to wrong pages that market them badly. This discourages Web growth,
which is a no-no.

That’s too far fetched IMHO. Sites grow for plenty of different reasons,
and you have control over your (internal) links. Therefore you have full
control of what pages you want to boost a PR of by linking to them. I
don’t see how that would discourage anyone from growing their sites…

--
Cheers,
Dmitri
See Site Sig Below
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Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Here is a thought...

Perhaps it is obvious or possibly a well-known fact. As a site grows,
I believe it has tendencies to have its PageRank depleted unless it
manages to keep expanding. Why?

It's not happening with my site. What I do is: fetch the PageRank of each
page, calculate 8 to the power of PageRank, and add all up. The number is
growing :-)

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
or have them custom made
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

__/ [John Bokma] on Wednesday 12 October 2005 17:32 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Here is a thought...

Perhaps it is obvious or possibly a well-known fact. As a site grows,
I believe it has tendencies to have its PageRank depleted unless it
manages to keep expanding. Why?

It's not happening with my site. What I do is: fetch the PageRank of each
page, calculate 8 to the power of PageRank, and add all up. The number is
growing :-)

Is that based on something you read? If so, can you provide a link?

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Software patents destroy innovation
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
1:55am up 48 days 14:09, 3 users, load average: 0.46, 0.44, 0.48
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Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

__/ [John Bokma] on Wednesday 12 October 2005 17:32 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Here is a thought...

Perhaps it is obvious or possibly a well-known fact. As a site
grows, I believe it has tendencies to have its PageRank depleted
unless it manages to keep expanding. Why?

It's not happening with my site. What I do is: fetch the PageRank of
each page, calculate 8 to the power of PageRank, and add all up. The
number is growing :-)

Is that based on something you read?

The PageRank is the result of applying a logarithmic function with base
n on a number. People guess n to be somewhere around 7. I use 8, since
one can calculate base 8 log easily with a computer, so a PageRank of 7
means a figure around 8 ^ 7 (8 to the power of 7). But even if I use a
different base, I see what I call the PageRank sum increasing: if I link
from my PR7 home page to a new page, the page will get around PR5, often
PR6. I don't see (yet) other pages linked from the homepage drop from,
say, PR6 to PR4.

I never understood the whole PageRank leak thingy, or at least not the
version in which linking from a PRx page to n pages resulted in a PRx-1.
I don't see this happen, but maybe my n is too low, I can imagine that
if one takes n sufficiently big it does have an impact.

If so, can you provide a link?

Like with a lot of SEO findings in general, it's based on my own site :-
D. I have a PageRank of 7 for quite some time, and even though I have
been added links, and pages, it hasn't been leaked to zero yet :-)

At least in my case more pages = more traffic, holds:

avg/day month
81 sept 2003
700 sept 2004
3818 sept 2005

I hope to hit the 5000 by the end of the month. More visitors means also
a higher probability of people linking back to you :-D.

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
or have them custom made
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

__/ [John Bokma] on Thursday 13 October 2005 03:36 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

__/ [John Bokma] on Wednesday 12 October 2005 17:32 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Here is a thought...

Perhaps it is obvious or possibly a well-known fact. As a site
grows, I believe it has tendencies to have its PageRank depleted
unless it manages to keep expanding. Why?

It's not happening with my site. What I do is: fetch the PageRank of
each page, calculate 8 to the power of PageRank, and add all up. The
number is growing :-)

Is that based on something you read?

The PageRank is the result of applying a logarithmic function with base
n on a number. People guess n to be somewhere around 7. I use 8, since
one can calculate base 8 log easily with a computer, so a PageRank of 7
means a figure around 8 ^ 7 (8 to the power of 7). But even if I use a
different base, I see what I call the PageRank sum increasing: if I link
from my PR7 home page to a new page, the page will get around PR5, often
PR6. I don't see (yet) other pages linked from the homepage drop from,
say, PR6 to PR4.

I never understood the whole PageRank leak thingy, or at least not the
version in which linking from a PRx page to n pages resulted in a PRx-1.
I don't see this happen, but maybe my n is too low, I can imagine that
if one takes n sufficiently big it does have an impact.

Interesting. Reverse engineering the Google algorithms is something with
potential.

If so, can you provide a link?

Like with a lot of SEO findings in general, it's based on my own site :-
D. I have a PageRank of 7 for quite some time, and even though I have
been added links, and pages, it hasn't been leaked to zero yet :-)

It never should decline because there is a cyclic relationship wherein
getting more pages and higher PageRank leads to more of the same. Momentum,
however, is a crucial bit and also coping with change, e.g. CSS, dynamic
content, RSS feeds, Web applications...

At least in my case more pages = more traffic, holds:

avg/day month
81 sept 2003
700 sept 2004
3818 sept 2005

If only these recent referral spammers were genuine visitors... I'd look at
nearly 5 figures daily.

I hope to hit the 5000 by the end of the month. More visitors means also
a higher probability of people linking back to you :-D.

Exactly. And again I stress the importance of momentum. With RSS feeds and
technologies, which I am sure many learn about in your pages, you need to
snatch those subscribers during that short period of hype. Likewise, you
need to get the links before your pages become out-of-date, old-fashioned
or at worse scenarios -- mirrored or plagiarised in principle.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Mod me up and I'll mod you 'insightful'"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
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