Hi all. Would it be possible to "grow" a decent PR out of a large network of PR0 sites linking to each other? (in a relevant and non-spammy way) It's a bit of a grey area, but having such a network that's ready to dish out PR on call would be great.
Nobody knows for sure, but i think that in order to gain PR, you need to get it from another site that links to you with PR. So, a bunch of PR0's linking to each other would probably not generate PR. It's like the law of entropy or perpetual motion - it "winds down" - you can't generate something from nothing..
even if now those pages have PR 0 don't mean that those pages don't worth anything. They do, depending on the backlinks they have.
It is possible because every (unless banned) site has a PR greater then 0. Even if a website doesn't have a single link linking to it has a PR (let's say 0.15) that can be "transfered" when you're linking to other sites. It's a revealed fact actually, and it's logical: if it wasn't like that we would have a chicken-egg drama situation because at the beginning no site had any PR. It's logical that Google does have to give some PR to new sites. In practice, PR0 links don't have much weight so having thousands of such links might as valuable as one stupid PR1-2 link (in terms of PR). But since you're building relevant links it's still a good idea. In the future your sites will get a higher PR and there will be something to transfer. I've read an e-book called "PageRank Uncovered" by Chris Ridings and Mike Shishigin and can recommend it if you're not too afraid of mathematical type of explanations. The book is 56 pages long and explores the famous published PageRank formula. It applies the formula to some typical linking examples. This is where I got an idea how to link my sites to channel more PR to more important pages.
You would have to do a damn fine job of making sure the sites do not appear to Google as a link farm. And mickn, you are right: if a URL has absolutely no links to it, it still has an actual PR (not toolbar PR) of 0.15.
Makes sense, I guess if you could get 1 or 2 pages in there with a PR of 1 or 2 it would eventually help lift the PR of the rest of the "farm"
Assuming that the pages linking to the main site all are PR 0 with 0 backlinks you will get nothing for the main site.
That can be answered easily by reading some very good threads in the link development section of this forum itself.
According to Google, if you are doing something for SEO (including link building), DON'T. Google looks for naturally generated links (and natural writing to convey your information to readers). Google's algorithm changes would appear to be an attempt to identify such natural sites. As to links, Google is trying to identify whether a site is an "authority" site by checking who links to the site. If many sites naturally refer to your site as a source of authoritative info, then you become an authority site. My experience of over six years confirm that the above is not just theory. My first site received a PR7 and I didn't optimize it at all because I had no knowledge of SEO. The jump in PR happened after Yahoo and DMOZ listed the site in their directories (as it was a non-commercial site, Yahoo also listed it free). My second and third sites were not so lucky, even though I did conscioulsy attempt SEO. These sites could be commercialized and so Yahoo wouldn't provide a free listing. And DMOZ had gone to sleep by that time. These sites languish with PRs of 3 and 2 respectively. I also noted that my PR2 site receives the highest traffic, several times what the PR7 site used to get. So PR and traffic need not go together. So you have to decide whether you want the "respect" that comes from high PR, or traffic that brings sales and revenue. And focus your efforts accordingly.
I agree with that, but also I have to add some stuff: - your website network must be spread across different class C ips in order your links to have some value. That used to work before (i've tried it) but nowadays G looks for the IP and neglects links from same class C ip address. (I've also experimented with that). - in order to get your websites indexed they have to have some external link. This will bring you the initial start for building pr. - if you don't have many websites linking then your crawl rate will be very low, and therefore the pr increase that you're seeking will be very very slow and practically not useful. - if you are smart and get all those websites in your network to be included in some (external) directories and link your network sites in good way - i.e. not in footer links which are practically worthless, you can achieve some very nice pr in an year or so .. That's my opinion, Cheers, Venetsian
Venetsian, thanks for your feedback. I agree with you but I think of one thing slightly different and I'll explain why. I was watching the Google video by Matt Cutts titled SEO Myths or something like that. What I got from the video is that it is a myth that the same class C links don't count and it is not true in general. When you do the linking the "natural" way you shouldn't think about this at all. But, their spam filter is another thing. If you get too many links from the same IP or class C (many is a relative term so I guess compared to other links) that becomes very suspicious spam filter reacts as you say and links become worthless. So, the key difference is too many.
Ok. I agree with that. But this statement confirms that if you have more than 2-3 cross linked links within the same Class C network the algo's are going to put it as spam and that's clearly unacceptable within the frames of the project/idea discussed in this thread. To make link farming you need to have different ips in order to obtain maximum link juice. Otherwise it will be accepted as link spam and there will be no pr farming. I agree with what you've said mickn. Don't get me wrong. I just want to underline that G's natural linking means no more than 2-3 links per unique website! Cheers, Venetsian. P.S. I forgot to mention that the best way to do a PR farming is to simulate network of sub-domains. For sub-domains you don't get punished for being in the same class C but you still have to keep the interlinking as low as possible. I suggest that you use this formula: - make about 50-60 sub-domains. Link one to another (only with one link on the main page) and have a lot of leafs - not more than 100 (you don't need more pages because they will be ranked in 5-6 months). On the leafs put link only to the subdomain nothing else. put list of sub-domains on the main page of the main domain. Submit the the sub-domains to directories the also the main domain. Just observe how you farm pr.
why bother? you will not get more than pr2 or max 3 anyway... but you can get cheap or free pr3+ links easier