I did a search for this subject and found good results but the results were mostly over a year old. I was wondering what the impact of outbound links is on page rank. Are outbound links considered to bleed off page rank or have no effect? Also, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to use no follow links on outbound links, and what effect no follow links have on page rank. Thanks.
The basic concept of Google is to transfer PR between pages. Therefore, having outbound links on the page will bleed off PR. The real question is how much PR does the page have on it to loose. I use the rule that every outbound link has the "nofollow" attribut in it or I will use a JavaScript link. This "blocks" the PR bleed. In small sites, PR bleed has a major impact, but on very large sites it has very little. Finally, if the page has 1 outbound link and 100 internal link, the impact will be little. If the page has 100 outbound links and 1 internal link, the impact will be major. Hope this helps, Jim Catanich http://www.catanich.com/
On several pages I'm using also Javascript links. But when I link to "autorithy related pages" like Dmoz categories I usually put direct links. That bleed off some PR, but maybe (probably I'm too optimistic) my own page could be considered better by Google.
In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, "nofollow", for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website builders and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a "vote" in the PageRank system. The nofollow relationship was added in an attempt to help combat spamdexing. More about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#Google.27s_.22rel.3D.27nofollow.27.22_proposal
SEO Ranter, I just want to clarify this. I have many good links on my site where there is an intentional requirement to pass PR. And at others, I won't. This issue is when to use it. A new client http://www colodallas.com/ has a PR1 site. Outside of issues with internal navagation and linking, it hasn't been indexed by Google in 18 months. By putting their "link information" on my home page will get the site indexed very quickly. But if I use nofollow, this will not happen. So I feel that for 2 months, there will not be a Google Backlink update or PR update, so it is save (no bleed). It will not be there as of 1/1/08. Or if you check out http://www 1000bulbs.com/ and look at the lower right corner, there are ~7 outbound links being applied. But it is in the footer of all 9,000 pages. If this really needs to be done, then it should have had the nofollow attribute in the links. Many for the directories and forums are using this now making them less SEO important. Wiki has it on all outbound links.