Cloaking links and stopping pr leak with links

Some questions about link cloaking and stopping pr passing.


With link cloaking, say you are promoting clickbank affiliate links on a site and you don't want the visitors to see the link's url address. What is the best way to cloak it? Is there a way to cloak it and at the same time to stop pr from passing to it?

With stopping pr leak, what is the best method for this? I've read about the new "nofollow" you can add to a link but it seems it is not certain whether this is in effect right now and I havent seen google say this is ok for site links, only for blogs and similar to prevent certain kinds of spamming. Also, it causes the link text itself to not be read, the whole thing is ignored.

Is using php a better way? Does the spider read the link text but not pass pr to it (its a dangling link?) Would you recommend the "via" thing from seo toys? Can this php technique be used with internal pages such as an about page and with external links like affiliate links? Can it be used on CJ links?


Sorry for the barrage of questions. Appreciate any help.

 

The answer is very simple. There is no such thing as "pr leak". It's a myth. Yes, links do help pr for the sites they link to, but it has absolutely no "drain effect" on the site where the link comes from. I gave you the nice version, if Compar sees this thread, he'll be a bit more direct. Welcome to the forums and if you stick around, you'll learn a thing or two here.

 

Check this thread.

 

Thanks mopacfan. I see this is a hot issue and I don't wish to argue on and on about it. Based on everything I've read though, I disagree. I believe there is an effect, there is a net drain on a site, and so apparently do many prominent seos who are aware of pr channeling, who I assume have done experiments to confirm the effect of pr leaks and the effect of allowing pr to go only to certain pages in a site and its effect on rank in certain conditions and situations and use this knowledge. These guys have #1 rankings on very competitive keywords in se's like google.

Anyways, you won't convice me otherwise, especially if the arguments against it are anything like what I've read so far.


In any case, I realize the bulk of the effort needs to be directed at getting links, one way and reciprocated.

I have read that thread. I just want to get an idea of which technique to go with. I'm leaning towards php.

 

There IS PR leakage.
To hide a link probably it is best make it a form. The link is actually a submit button but you make it look like a link.

 

sound the alarms! call the coast guard! compar arises!

In all serious, as compar has said, where is the documentation for this?

 

How about the PageRank paper?

 

*sigh* -- Not again.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PR LEAKAGE.

Yes, I've seen many so-called experts claim otherwise (we even have one here in another thread). You cannot see PR leak, you cannot measure PR leak, there is no evidence that it exists anywhere except in a hypothetical universe -- and yet like the Abominable Snowman or Sasquatch, otherwise apparently intelligent people still continue to insist that it is real. Interestingly, even those who do make such claims admit that the effect is nil to miniscule on actual web sites.

Forget about it. And most importantly, forget about looking for strategies to counter something that is a fiction in the first place.

 

Agreed - there is no PR leakage. Each time that G updates PR, new baselines are created for each level of PR. The same criteria that gave a site a PR of 5.9 one quarter might only equate to a PR 4.8 the next quarter. This may happen every day with Google's in-house version of PR, but it certainly would take a lot of processing power.

There is absolutely no way to verify so-called PR linkage unless you could take a snapshot of the entire Google database, make some changes, re-run the PR algo with that same database snapshot, and then make a comparative analysis. Because the internet is a dynamic entity, you could not verify PR leakage even with a real time PR calculator.

IMHO, the Google toolbar PR gives us only a fraction of what we need to know about G's in-house PR calculations. In questions that I have sent to G, they have stated that PR "is at the heart of their ranking technology". The real question is how do we use the toolbar PR in conjuction with SERP's to get insight into the real PR calculations

 

Adding outbound links decreases PR. Consider this simple example: a 2 page site (home page A and internal page B). The home page has a PR of 3000 from external links. A links to B and B links back to A.

The PR of Page B is 3000*0.85 = 2550. Page B links to A so the PR of Page A is = 3000 + 0.85*2550 = 3000 + 2167.5 = 5167.5

That's a nice improvement from the internal link. Now put a link on the home page, to some external page C.

Now the PR of Page B = 3000*0.85/2 = 1275. PR of Page A becomes 3000 + 1275*.85 = 4083.75

There IS a difference between 5167 and 4083, RIGHT?

This example is a bit extreme, but it illustrates the point. Outbound links lower PR *indirectly* by lowering the PR of the internal pages that link to the page.

If compar's comment that links don't leak PR was true, then adding a link to a page wouldn't change its PR. Then why PR is calculated iteratively until all PR's converge? If that was true, PR would be calculated in just one pass based on incoming links, and there would be no dampening factor. The d-factor is because loops in linking structure would send the PR calculator in an endless loop. The d-factor makes these loops converge by passing less and less PR after each loop.

The amount of leak of PR depends on the number of links a page has + its internal linking structure. I don't say all this to discourage linking, but just to make a point that outgoing links decrease PR.

Put 50 outgoing links on a high PR page, and if I am wrong, your PR won't decrease. Of course, I am right, and your PR will decrease Or better yet, read the god-damn paper and UNDERSTAND it.

Now, I am anxiously awaiting all the experts with a proof that outgoing links don't leak PR.

 

I read somewhere that relevant outbound links are can improve your SERPs in G. - Possibly true or complete myth ? If its true that should counter any negative effect of external links

 

I've seen a lot of high ranking ultra competetive keyword affiliate type sites that send a straight link to the relevant section on dmoz on their homepage and other straight links on other pages to relevant sites so it seems there is some truth to that.

 

Why is it that anyone who argues that PR leak doesn't exist is always assumed to have either not read or not understood "the god-damn paper"? In other words, if I agree with you, it's because I have "read and understood the god-damn paper" and if I disagree it's because I have failed to do one or the other or both? Notice that the alternatives for those who promote this theory do not include the very likely possibility that they are simply wrong?

Why is it that no one can provide any real world examples of this fictional entity?

 

If page rank leak does exist, how come huge directories such as Yahoo! and Dmoz have some of the highest page ranks possible? They have hundreds of thousands of outgoing links and that doesn't seem to affect their rating. Admittedly they also have a lot of incoming links but I doubt they have as many incoming as outgoing.

Besides, the whole idea of page rank is that it is based on outgoing links, if Google penalised people for linking to other sites then it would be much harder for them to build their index because people would be afraid to link to other people due to losing their covered page ranking.

 

THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING!!!

MY PAGE IS LEAKING, MY PAGE IS LEAKING!!!

Anyone notice the similarity?

 

couple of questions - any benefit to naming your home (index page) link on internal pages of your site the main keyword of your website?


any benefit to linking your home link to the exact url of your site (http://www.domainname.com) instead of the file name like index.html?


thanks

 

If you mean using anchor text in internal links to your home page, sure -- do it.

None that I know of.