Link flow for multiple links to same URL
-
Hi there,
my question is as follows:How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?)
This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail.
- Answers should include source
- Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable
- The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc.
We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718
On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.
-
I totally agree on the focus thing in general - it's not helpful to act with PageRank in mind when it comes to layout decisions etc.
But: For large websites (e.g. 100,000 pages and up) crawl rate, indexing and rankings of deeper parts of the site depend heavily on the internal link graph. Taking a deeper look at the internal link graph gives us a lot of useful information in these cases, does it?
Now: Think of links sitting in a template that gets used on 50,000 pages. A little change here is likely to cause quite a difference in the internal link graph.
For example I've run PageRank simulations with both models on a smaller website with only 1,500 pages / 100,000 links. For many pages, the little difference ends up with 20-30% more or less internal PageRank - for these individual pages, this could be crucial for crawling, indexation and rankings. Still not useful?
Since moz runs it's own iterative PR like algorithms: How do you guys handle this with mozRank / mozTrust? Which model leads to better correlations with rankings?
-
- The links both get PageRank flow...
- The link value gets divided, though, so it wouldn't exactly double the value.
- The link extraction process might choose to only select one link from the page based on certain factors (perhaps ignoring some links not because they are duplicative but based on location, or other qualifiers)
Here is Matt Cutts talking about this very issue. And here again. It is the closest thing we have to an answer.
I think the reason for the "first link counts" is really an extension of an understanding of PageRank. Let's say a page has 1 outbound link. It gets 100% of the value passable by that page. Now, let's say the page adds another link, but it is the exact same link. Now, each link gets 50%. The sum total is 100%. It is as if the 2nd link were never added. But, this calculation changes depending on the other links on the page. Let's say a page has 2 links on it. One to you, one to someone else. 50/50. If you get another, you jump to 67/33. Slightly better. As the page increases in number of links, your additional link approaches a doubling of the first link's value. So on one end of the spectrum it is valueless. On the other end of the spectrum it doubles.
The other question is whether anchor text is counted for all links. Some experimentation indicates that only the 1st anchor text matters. This might also indicate the selection / extraction process mentioned in #2.
That all being said, I think I agree with Matt Cutts on this one. This is such a small issue that you really should focus on bigger picture stuff. It is interesting, yes, but not particularly useful.
I hope that helps!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Too many page links warning... but each link has canonical back to main page? Is my page OK?
The Moz crawl warns me many of my pages have too many links, like this page http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting ...... has 269 links but many of the links are like this /jobs/jobtitles/Accounting?k=&w=3&hiddenLocationID=463170&depth=2 and are used to refine search criteria.... when you click on those links they all have a canonical link back to http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting Is my page being punished for this? Do I have to put "no follow" tags on every link I do not want the bots to follow and if I do so is Roger (moz bot) not going to count this as a link?
On-Page Optimization | | Webjobz0 -
Too many links on the same page
I have a problem with to many links on the same page, and there all for the classified adds of my web site, what would be the best way to handle this.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
Too Many On-Page Links error
Hello, I am new to this. The crawl of y website reveals that "Too Many On-Page Links" were found on many pages of the website. However, when I check those pages, not more than 5 links are found- I have not included links outside of the post (sidebar/comments/related posts - are these counted in the crawl report ?). I do use SEO SmartLinks Plugin where in some keywords point to Wordpress Categories but am not sure whether that could be the problem at all. Can someone guide what the issue could be and how to debug ?
On-Page Optimization | | sradhey0 -
Long url > 115
Hi, in my web code I have link to my images that are resize online and the link is very long. like this src="http://img.espectador.com/mediadelivery/?fn=&i_enc=1&i_a=L2hvbWUvZXNwZWN0YWRvci93d3cvaW1hZ2VuZXMvMjUwMTY2XzEzNDk5NTQ0NjFfY29uc3RydWNjaW9uLmpwZw==&i_cl=1&i_tr=100&i_q=70&i_rt=0&i_w=250&i_h=188&i_wtmrk=" alt="Paro parcial de Sunca" border="0"/> I have a lot of warning in my reports with this and I would like to omit this warnings How can I do that? noindex? nofollow? Thanks The original page that contain that code is this http://www.espectador.com/noticias/250166/paro-parcial-de-sunca Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | informatica8100 -
URL and SEO
How much weight do search engines give the URL? We're a medical call center provider and medicalcallcenter is part of our URL. Does that help us much? Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | THMCC0 -
Keyword in URL
Hi everyone, I've heard many times that keyword prominence in url have a good impact for on-page optimization, even in SEOmoz it is one of the on-page factors. But what if i put keyword in URL then some of the page weight will be targeted to the page in the URL. Which in my vision makes only a negative impact. For ex. Targeted page <a>with keyword "buy car in NY" has a link with anchor text "buy car in NY" pointing on page **, so some weight from A will be transferred to B. Also I think this subject cover a cross linking, so I would like to know, what is the right way of doing cross linking and does it still brings any impact on keyword rankings in SERP.**</a> <a>**Good answer will be appreciated. Cheers, Russel**</a>
On-Page Optimization | | smokin_ace0 -
Too many on page links
I'm having trouble interpreting this data. It says several of my blog pages have too many on page links, some as high as 140 and there is no example of a blog post that they are referring to. What am I missing? I never post more than a handful (5-7) in our 600-1000wd blogs. When I drill down, it doesn't give me very much information except "Found over 41 years ago" off to the right. When I click on the "too many on page links" URL, it provides a long list of website pages that are renamed with the blog name. huh? A lot of this stuff isn't very intuitive, SEOMoz.
On-Page Optimization | | amandahx20 -
How would you handle network header links?
Some companies have a lot of sites covering various topics, for example, http://ninemsn.com.au/. Each category also have dropdown menus where there are more links, taking their pages to well over 100 links. Should these headers be implemented in javascript? Is there a list of best practices somewhere when dealing with a lot of network sites? I'd prefer to reduce the number of links, but sometimes company policies don't allow this. Any suggestions or tips would be helpful.
On-Page Optimization | | bigpond0