Geek-it

Recently I have been involved in a rather painful discussion in a forum wether outgoing links reduce a websites Page Rank. The discussion went on for ages just repeating ourselfs mainly because chrishirst was wrong and refused to be beaten by a newbi, upstart like myself. He was resovled that:

the PR value of any page is NOT reduced by outgoing links

You can see for yourself here, you can see why I didn’t want to quit. The conversation is bizarre, even though I had back up every point with evidence he still couldn’t bring himself to admit the possiblity he may be wrong.

The debate was completely ground to a halt because; He could not make sense of how if the equation was based on incoming links how could outgoing links reduce the amount og Page Rank.

We repeated the same points for ages, I tried to get make him understand that the formula was done from scratch each time, and it did not need to be minus in the equation.

NO I understand that you need to agree on these points on how google’s page rank calulation works:

• The green bar shown on the toolbar is just a label given to a page depending on the group that the actual page rank falls into.
• The calculation is done for each individual page not site.
• Each time the calculation is done it is done from scratch; no prior Page rank is worked in the equation.
• The equation is repeated multiple times.

This is how I like to think of the calulation. Bear in mind this is highly simplified (also if you look at the actual equation the specifics are wrong, it designed to make it easier to understand like went you find out that everythign you learnt in GCSE physic was all a lie when you do A Level Physic).

Each page indexed by google is given a value of one; part of this value is given as a vote which is divided between all of the pages that it links to. So a new value is calulated. Now this is the part that most people understand, Pagerank is calulated from incoming links.

However this is where people get lost, the calculation is then repeated starting with the new values, so the pervious pagerank that has been gain on pervious calulation can be passed on. This process is repeated multiple times. So because your vote is devided between the pages that you have links to, if you give all your vote to pages that link back to you on the next vote (calulation) you are going to get more back than if you have linked elsewhere.

So that is the main point if you link out of your own website, to a site that does not link back. The page rank is not coming back to your site so you are going to drain/lose/leak PR.

How much effect does page rank have on your sites ranking? That is a much more complicated question.

Last but not least some killer sites I found on my travels. My friend has just started up a website about Jewish speeddating in London, she really good at that kinda of stuff. have a look. This is my mates site that he designed to help you sell your house

I must sleep.