Lot of people think outbound links cause a PR (page rank) leak from a site--while many think thats not right. Which one is true?
If you link to sites that Google doesn't like it might lower your pagerank. Wherever possible Google suggests using nofollow.
Let's think about this. WHERE do you get PageRank from? Other Web pages. If you link to a Web page, you're passing on part of your PageRank to that other page. It doesn't matter whether it's to another page on your site or not - you're still passing it on. The only way you're really going to "leak" PageRank (in most cases) is if you have far more links pointing out to other Web sites (yes, external sites, not other pages on your own site) than you have coming in.
This is really confusing to me. I understand what you said; technically I agree with you. But again I see lot of big sites with thousands of outgoing links has good PR. Lot of people actually think there is no PR leak. Any thoughts?
Let me put it this way. Count the number of links that are coming in to your pages - whether from other pages on your site or from other sites. Then count the number of links that are going to other pages - whether elsewhere on your site, or to other sites. You want the first number to be higher than the second. If that's confusing, then just disregard the "other pages on your site" part of the second number and just focus on the external outbound links - the target will still be the same (you want the first number to be higher).
Linking to a site without any reciprocal link will let the pr link juice to pass to other site if the link is dofollow.
Just think why people do link exchange with relevant websites? You will get the answer, To get any business from their link partner's website...---> NO To get more traffic through their website ---> NO It's just because to get higher PR.
In situations where I am linking to a site that is not related to mine, but I want to have the link for other reasons (someone asked an off topic question, for example), I use the nofollow attribute. I don't know how much of a difference it makes. I link to plenty of legit related sites, and I do not use the nofollow then. Matt
Yes and No. If i stick a link to you on my homepage, it's not going to "leak" Pagerank or effect my homepage Pagerank under normal circumstances. But... if my homepage has 10 internal links to my subpages, by adding your link it makes it 11 URL's my homepage PR is distributed amongst which means slightly less weight being passed to my 10 subpages.
I wrote this last week, hopefully it should help a bit http://www.clicks.ws/blog/2008/05/21/pagerank-revisited/
it is better to plug the PR leak with your internal linking, rather to worry about the leak from outbound links : ))
From what I understand, the bigger effect is the PR you pass to other sites.. i.e.: If you're a PR5 but you have 100 outgoing links, the PR you pass to each site is shared/divided among those 100 sites... If you only have 10 outgoing links, the PR you pass is higher to each site.. So from a link exchange point of view, there is a greater benefit of trading with sites with low outgoing links.. But i am not certain you actually "lose" PR, otherwise all directories would be a PR0 LOL..