A key page on my site (call it 'page.html') isn't performing the way I think it should. The page is basically provides a categorized listing of the database results, so individual results pages are fully spiderable instead of relying on a form submission to render. page.html is accessible directly from the home page, which has good PR and authority, but none of that is being passed into page.html itself. If page.html is not seen as worthy, than nothing that it links to will either. This is clearly a problem. Is there any reason to think that the physical location of the page in the heirarchy would influence how the spiders view the relative importance of this page? Here's why I ask: page.html is actually a level down in the heirarchy from all the pages it links to. Links displayed on domain.com/folder1/folder2/page.html all point to pages at domain.com/folder3/result.html ...so it is linking up the heirarchy, and I'm wondering if the spiders think that the page is less important because it is buried so deep. Thoughts?
Yeah, the spiders have a harder time - or are less willing to - check out pages deeper into the site, according to my experience. More PR should mean deeper indexing, but whatever.com/folder/page.html will be noticed more quickly, and more often, than whatever.com/folder/folder/folder/page.html. Just an opinion, but this is what I have seen in my own results.
Thanks. I guess I have seen several suggestions that folders below folder1/folder2/ are likely to be discounted or ignored, so I'm possibly okay there. I haven't seen anything about whether linking upwards from there would matter, though. If authority trickles down, this architecture requires it to go uphill again. If that makes sense. I've assumed that the direct link from the home page would be sufficient to indicate importance, but maybe that's not true.