How Do They Do It?

I've noticed in some of my early reciprocal link exchanges that a few of the websites that link to me pass no page rank to their links pages even though the home page has pr and links directly to their reciprocal links page. There is no pr on their links pages. On the other hand, my reciprocal links page has a pr just below my home page.

What's the deal? If I type into Google in quotes "shadyco.com/links.html" their page is returned, so it appears to be indexed. There isn't any nofollow added that I can see in the link off their home page or on their links pages. Somehow, they've found a way to keep all their link juice to apply how they choose. Any ideas?

A big part of the PageRank algorithm has to do with the number of links on each page. So, if the site was a PR1 and the homepage had 100 links on it, it wouldn't pass enough PR juice to bump the links page up to PR1.

oldenstylehats said:

A big part of the PageRank algorithm has to do with the number of links on each page. So, if the site was a PR1 and the homepage had 100 links on it, it wouldn't pass enough PR juice to bump the links page up to PR1.

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I can certainly see what you are saying. One website that links back to me has a PR of 4 with about 40 outgoing links (almost all internal links) but their links page has no PR at all. Just seems weird to me since I have more outbound links than that on my homepage.

whs1978 said:

I can certainly see what you are saying. One website that links back to me has a PR of 4 with about 40 outgoing links (almost all internal links) but their links page has no PR at all. Just seems weird to me since I have more outbound links than that on my homepage.

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Do you know how long they've had their links page online and linked to from their PR 4 page? Also, PR does not spread evenly over internal pages of a site. For example, if I've got a blog and a blog post gets PR5, the pages that are before and after it, and therefore directly linked to it, do not necessarily get that link juice and increased PR.

oldenstylehats said:

Do you know how long they've had their links page online and linked to from their PR 4 page? Also, PR does not spread evenly over internal pages of a site. For example, if I've got a blog and a blog post gets PR5, the pages that are before and after it, and therefore directly linked to it, do not necessarily get that link juice and increased PR.

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Actually, I don't know how long their links page has been up. I should be able to find out in the arch*ive.0rg site. The site isn't a blog. Lots of my other link partners are just pr2 and pr3, so maybe they just don't have enough link juice to pass on. Still, it bugs me. I didn't know if maybe they had figured out some way to game the system.

whs1978 said:

Actually, I don't know how long their links page has been up. I should be able to find out in the arch*ive.0rg site. The site isn't a blog. Lots of my other link partners are just pr2 and pr3, so maybe they just don't have enough link juice to pass on. Still, it bugs me. I didn't know if maybe they had figured out some way to game the system.

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Though I can't empirically prove it, it wouldn't surprise me if clearly labeled links pages receive a penalty.

oldenstylehats said:

Though I can't empirically prove it, it wouldn't surprise me if clearly labeled links pages receive a penalty.

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Hummmm, actually you may be onto something there. Although my links page is named link.htm, my anchor text is descriptive, whereas most of my link partners use anchor text such as links, link partners, etc. Maybe anchor text such as "Link Partners" is discounted by google.

whs1978 said:

Hummmm, actually you may be onto something there. Although my links page is named link.htm, my anchor text is descriptive, whereas most of my link partners use anchor text such as links, link partners, etc. Maybe anchor text such as "Link Partners" is discounted by google.

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Yeah, if you're going to do those kinds of link exchanges, I'd go with "Recommended Sites", "Friends", or something else slightly more ambiguous.