Is it better to have a link from a PR6 page that has 100 internal links and 37 outbound links or PR5 with 100 inbound and 18 outbound links ?
Depends on the link (anchortext, pictures, etc) quality. Also, depends on what you're after by pursuing the link. If you just want PR, take the PR 6 link. If you're after qualified traffic, take the link from the page with the closest theme. Regardless, I would take a link from the site offering your keywords as anchortext for your link. If they both will, choose the best themed site. Try not to get hung up on the PR of the page - think about the value of the link....PR aside.
Thanks Both pages are relevant and I can add what ever anchor text I like (hooraaaar) - hence the question
All other things equal (page theme and content), the PR6 with 37 links is better probably 90% of the time. It is possible that the PR6 site is a weak 6 and the PR5 site is a strong 5, so the PR5 could give your site more page rank. Remember, though, the page rank scale is exponential, which means the site with the page rank of 6 is actually 5-6 times stronger (more important in Google's eyes) than the page rank of 5 site. So more than likely the extra page rank offsets the extra links.
Well I think the answer is pure arithmetic. Assuming that all other things are equal between the two pages and that by "better" you mean which transfers the most PR here is the calculation. We believe that a page transfers 85% of it PR value divided by the number of links. In this case internal links are no different than links to other web sites they can both be consider outbound, as they point at other pages. So the PR6 page transfers (6x.85)/137=.0372 PR points. And the PR5 page transfers (5x.85)/118=.0360 PR points. BTW you describe the PR5 page as having 100 inbound links. I assume you mean internal links rather than backlinks, which is what 'inbound' usually means. In other words both pages are the same in that regard.
Compar, Why do you think only 85% of the PR is passed on? According to the original thesis all the PR gets passed on. Also, you are saying the PR value we see on the google toolbar is a linear scale, which it definitely is not. Its well known to be exponetial with a basis value of somewhere between 5 and 6. A more realistic view of how much is transferred is the following: (assuming he means each page has 100 inbound links, not internal) PR6 page transfers between (5.5^6)/37=748 and (5.5^6.99)/37=4115 PR5 page transfers between (5.5^5)/18=280 and (5.5^5.99)18=1538 Leads1, do you mean each page has 100 inbound links or internal links?
Compar is right... only 85% of PageRank is passed along (there is a 15% dampening effect applied). If 100% of PageRank was passed on, then you could have a PR7 page with one link to an internal page. Then that would be PR7... you could repeat that process and have an infinite number of PR7 pages. - Shawn
I assumed he meant internal links because otherwise the number is irrelevant to the question. It doesn't matter whether the pages have 1 or 1,000 inbound links. It only matters what the PR of the pages is. Now I thought when I did my calculation that there was a problem, because you are correct it is normally considered exponential or logarithmic. I have attached an Excel spreadsheet that indicates how many link it would take of each value to acheive PR5 to PR8, based on your formula and the 85% assumption.
That's what I though, but it doesn't matter really a link is a link whether it is passing PR to an internal page or to page on another web site. Did you look at my spreadsheet. Interesting numbers didn't you think?
Update including internal links and dampening constant: PR6 page transfers between (5.5^6)*.85/137=172 and (5.5^6.99)*.85/137=1078 PR5 page transfers between (5.5^5)*.85/118=36 and (5.5^5.99)*.85/118=196 The PR worth of the pages with the 100 internal links is certainly not as valuable as without the 100. Also I think Google won't even look at all the links.
That is an excellent chart Just goes to show how many links of what type to get to where you want. Mind you, I'm not sure that it makes a difference on SERPS The #1 result for my KW just had their PR reduced from 5 to 4 and stayed put. I'm still at 5 and at c20
leeds1, PR may still play some role, but more than likley it is a result of "how the PR was attained and not just the number itself. I mean to say, if a site is PR6 because of one link from a PR7 site it is far less powerful than if the site is a PR6 due to 555 links from PR4 sites. This is why just looking at the PR* of a site tells us little. If you would like to see a good example of this look at the Challange I put up in this thread ... http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=3659#post3659 I put up a table of today's results for the experimental page and I added two columns. One for PR and the second for Category. You can see on the table the PR is NOT a good predictor of placement in the serps. Caryl
Also the sites ahead of me are quite large >600 pages, so that's going to count. He also has good links into the centre of his website (ie: internal pages) that are very relevant, so he has done a good job. My site is about 55 pages and slowly growing although G has it listed as 130 odd.