Last post on this one from me (famous last words…).

Great article from Danny Sullivan today on PageRank sculpting. Saves me a lot of work, thanks Danny. Also, included is a video from Matt Cutts from May (I will include below in any case), which unfortunately I missed the first time around (if I had seen this and really thought about it and combined it with the data I was seeing from some old JavaScript links, I might have been well ahead of the game on the big two recent developments).

So, it looks like sparse internal linking, not linking out, turning comments off and iFrames will now be the order of the day! I hope not. Here are a few (white hat) things that you might want to try.

1. Combining your ‘legals’ and ‘privacy’ pages in to one page and linking to it more intelligently. I have no idea on the legal ease of where these pages should be linked from on your site (maybe someone could comment), so do this at you own risk. I am also absolutely certain that Google has factored in some weighting to these pages already, so don’t sweat this one too much.
2. Think about your other navigational links and make them better for users and Google (how many ‘about us’ pages do you really need?). In this I mean think about if you really need to link to a page or if you really need that site wide link to an unprofitable area. As we know ‘nofollowing’ no longer works and in some ways this is a good excuse to get your house in order from a usability, ‘weight’ flow and ‘weight’ wastasge perspective.
3. Remember a good website should embrace what the ‘web’ is about. Linking to sites and pages is a good thing if done for the right reasons and well. So all you ‘nofollow’ addicts should think a little about the trust your site developes by being an authority site. Authority sites do link to other sites (and give PageRank away). Rather than delete all of your outbound links that you previously ‘nofollowed’, open some of them up and ‘dofollow’ the ones that add value.

There will be a million takes on this new news and I am waiting to see what the fall out is. Either way Google makes the rule and we have to follow (no pun intended) them. Didn’t you know that? If you were Google would you do it any other way? Remember they own the search engine and we choose to use it.

OK, I was a bit wrong. Not 100% wrong, but a bit wrong. Let me explain…

Firstly, here is Matt Cutts’ latest post on PageRank sculpting.

Now rather than write a whole new article on this, here is my comment on Matt’s blog.

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Matt,

Before I start this, I am using the term ‘PageRank’ as a general term fully knowing that this is not a simple issue and ‘PageRank’ and the way it is calculated (and the other numerous methods Google use) are multidimensional and complex. However, if you use PageRank to imply ‘weight’ it make it a lot simpler. Also, ‘PageRank sculpting’ (in my view) is meant to mean ‘passing weight you can control’. Now… on with the comment!

As I have always said, Google makes the rules and needs to make those rules fit with what it wants to do and also change them when needed to fit with the changes that happen on the web.

Just like the new structure on JavaScript links and them now carrying weight and being crawlable, the PageRank sculpting change is understandable. Google now can and wants to index more of the web (JavaScript link change). Google wants to reverse a method that can only help people in the know (PageRank sculpting change). Logically, all is very understandable.

However, where the JavaScript link change is evolution, the PageRank sculpting change in not. Let me explain.

Using ‘nofollow’ on untrusted (or unknown trust) outbound links is sensible and I think that in general this is a good idea. Like wise using it on paid links is cool (the fact that all those people are now going to have to change from JavaScript to this method is another story…). I also believe that using ‘nofollow’ on ‘perfunctory’ pages is also good. How many times in the past did you search for your company name and get you home page at number one and your ‘legals’ page at number two. Now, I know that Google changed some things and now this is less prominent, but it still happens. As much as you say that these pages are ‘worthy’, I don’t agree that they are in terms of search engine listings. Most of these type of pages (along with the privacy policy page) are legal ease that just need to be on the site. I am not saying they are not important, they are (privacy policies are really important for instance), but, they are not what you site is about. Because they are structurally important they are usually linked from every pages on the site and as such gather a lot of importance and weight. Now, I know that Google must have looked at this, but I can still find lots of examples where these type of pages get too much exposure on the search listings. This is apart from the duplicate content issues (anyone ever legally or illegally ‘lifted’ some legals or privacy words from another site?).

In my view there is nothing wrong with saying ‘hey Google, these pages are not important from a search engine perspective, let me not give them so much weight’. Regardless of how Google now views these type of pages from a weight perspective, doing the above as a webmaster should be logical and encouraged. You have said this yourself at least a few times in the past.

Likewise, ‘nofollowing’ your archive pages on your blog. Is this really a bad thing? You can get to the pages from the ‘tag’ index or the ‘category’ index, why put weight to a page that is truly navigational. At least the tag and category pages are themed. Giving weight to a page that is only themed by the date is crazy and does not really help search engines deliver ‘good’ results (totally leaving aside the duplicate content issues for now).

To finish, I guess I want to make two points (which do have some embedded questions too), namely:

1. Now that we know that weight/PageRank/whatever will disappear (outside of the intrinsic wastage method that Google applies) when we use a ‘nofollow’ link, what do you think this will do to linking patterns? This is really a can of worms from an outbound linking and internal linking perspective. Will people still link to their ‘legals’ page from every page on their site? Turning comments ‘off’ will also be pretty tempting. I know this will devalue the sites in general, but we are not always dealing with logic here are we? (if we were you (as head of the web spam team) wouldn’t of had to change many things in the past. Changing the PageRank sculpting thing just being one of them).

2. Was there really a need to make this change? I know all sites should be equally capable of being listed in search engines without esoteric methods playing a part. But does this really happen anyway (in search engines or life in general)? If you hire the best accountant you will probably pay less tax than the other guy. Is that really fair? Also, if nobody noticed the change for a year (I did have an inkling, but was totally and completely in denial) then does that mean the change didn’t have to be made in the first place? As said, we now have a situation where people will probably make bigger and more damaging changes to their site and structure, rather than add a little ‘nofollow’ to a few links.

All in all, PageRank sculpting (or whatever we should call it) didn’t really rule my world. But, I did think that it was a totally legitimate method to use. Now that we know the ‘weight’ leaks, this will put a totally new (and more damaging) spin on things. Could we not have just left the ‘weight’ with the parent page? This is what I thought would happen most of the time anyway.

Still, I guess all of this keeps us all in a job, so we should not complain too much! However, I think you guys have got this one wrong and we will see in the next weeks and months how people jump on this.

P.S. having turned on the ‘nofollow’ indicator plug in on Firefox a long time ago, I have seen some of the abuse on this. However, I still don’t think that this way is the best method to combat this. You could of just ‘downgraded’ the trust score on sites that had abused the ‘nofollow’ thing to silly levels.

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In essence, I think this is just the start on some changes on this and let’s see how this develops in the next few weeks. Four things are sure in my mind, namely:

1. The ‘dofollow’ tag will come to the fore (if I am going to lose the ‘weight’ you might as well have it!).
2. The linking to ‘legals’, ‘privacy’, etc. pages will now be more sporadic.
3. Google have made a change that will affect website structure. This is either what they intended or a by-product.
4. Sites will link less.

Fun times… things have been a bit boring or late and this spice things up quite nicely!

I didn’t realise this was going on. I am a bit behind with my reading.

In essence, Matt Cutts mentioned some things that has put some panic in the SEO community about ‘nofollow’ and PageRank sculpting.

Danny Sullivan puts together a good post on the two biggest things to come out of the SMX Advanced event. Namely, Google now following JavaScript and Flash links and the PageRank sculpting ho-ha.

Here is also a funny post and video from Dan Thies (who was at the event in the actual room) about the PageRank sculpting saga. Also, on this page is a complex (but worth reading) post from (PageRank sculting pioneer) Leslie Rohde about PageRank and what he thinks about it all.

In essence, do you really think that:

1. PageRank can disappear (maybe a little bit, I guess; nothing is perfect. But no way that lots of it will)
2. PageRank flows to ‘nofollows’ (nope, not a chance)
3. PageRank flows equally to the ‘dofollow’ links (no, not really. In the same way that I don’t think it flows equally to internal and external links. However, I am pretty sure the ‘dofollow’ links on a page will get more weight than they would if there were no ‘nofollow’ links on the page)
4. PageRank sometimes just stays with the parent page rather than leak, disappear or transfer (I think this will be the case on many occasions)

All in all, don’t have sleepless nights on this one all you SEO PageRank sculpters. PageRank disappearing en masse would be just plain daft.

However, Matt you really need to respond on this one and get this sorted out…

Just enjoy…

www.booneoakley.com

Oh, also I linked to them (with a ‘dofollow’) just because I really liked it. Maybe they know more about SEO than they think they do (or I think they do!).

I always look closely at all of Google’s new tools. How I wish that Google Squared was around when I was at school!

Apart from the ways it can save you time in starting an information collection based activity or project, have a think about it from a link building persepctive.

Do you think the information sources Google lists here are trusted? Wade through the Wiki links and you will find some real gems that you may not have uncovered before. As Google adds to this project this will grow and grow.

Apart from sounding like a children’s book about frogs or rabbits or both (hey, look out for the animated film too; Tom Hanks is the voice for the Flash character!), Google, JavaScript and Flash now have a slightly different relationship.

This is a slow evolution based upon Google’s need to index the web like no one else could even dream about. This brings its own pressures and the need to index Flash (lot of pages) well is needed and the need to follow JavaScript links (more than you can count on ten abacuses and all your fingers) is even greater.

Rather than me talk about this, here is a fantastic post from Vanessa Fox on Google, JavaScript and Flash and some other stuff. Well (well) worth a read.

In essence, please don’t see that as a green light to do silly things (build your site in Flash, only have JavaScript links, etc.), but it certainly does open up some good possibilities.

P.S. clearly I was only joking about the new book and film. But Tom, if you are reading this, are you interested?