My position is that adding pages to site "can" cause a drop in the toolbar PR. I am breaking this question off from the Examining Reasons Why Page Rank Can Drop or Change (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2507) thread and want to open it up for discuss so the above thread will not hijacked by this issue and also to give this question a post title and expost it to more input.


For an example. When page5 is added by a 2 ways link to page1 of a 4 page site where the pages are all toolbar PR8 (in this example page1 has 4 PR9s pointed at it) the addition of real PR of 1 that is added to the site by page5, doesn't offset the voted real PR from page1 that is retain by page5 and not voted by page1 to the other 3 pages.

The more pages you add the more real PR that is voted to and retained by these new pages. As you add each additional page the real PR value drops on the original 4 pages and at some point the real PR value that was once within the toolbar PR8 range now falls to the toolbar PR7 range and on the next toolbar PR update your original 4 pages will have a toolbar PR7 not 8.

Where do the PR Experts stand on this one?

Note: I changed the above example slightly to make for clarity.

Where do the PR Experts stand on this one?
They are in Mountain View and they are not telling.

I personally don't think the overall total PR of a site is all that important, but how the PageRank is distributed throughout a site. No, adding pages to a site will NOT diminish the PR of the homepage one iota as far as I'm concerned. It's how the internal site navigation is handled that will determine the PR of the interior pages.

When a page is added to a 4 page site where the pages are all toolbar PR8 the addition of real PR of 1 that is added to the site, doesn't offset the transfer of real PR from the other 4 pages to this new page. Huh? The addition of what for how much?

Marcia: "Huh? The addition of what for how much?."

I used for an example adding 1 page to a 4 page site where each of the 4 pages has a toolbar PR8. Each page you add to your site adds the real PR value of 1 to the site. But when that page is added the other pages that are linked to that page will vote some of there PR to that new page. The over all result will be that the site has increased in real PR by 1 but the 4 original pages will decrease in real PR as some of the real PR those 4 pages have will be voted to the new page.

Each page you add to your site adds the real PR value of 1 to the site. That's the concept that I think is problematic. How are you defining "real PR value"? And adding a page adds 1 to what?

To be honest, I think someone with a PR4 site could take that to mean that if they have a PR4, adding a page will add 1 and make it a PR5, which is hogwash, even though some may interpret it that way.

Can Adding Pages To A Site Cause A Drop In Toolbar PR?
Adding pages to a site will cause the PR of *which page* to drop? The homepage or another one? Let's be perfectlyl clear if we're propogating an assumption.

My position is that adding pages to site "can" cause a drop in the toolbar PR.
Again - a drop for which page? Frankly, I don't think that adding pages to a site will cause the homepage PR to drop. I think that's carrying "PR leak" a bit too far and is an erroneous assumption based on a severely flawed supposition.

If this were true, which I don't believe for a moment, why do sites like this one, my site and hundreds of thousands of others that have active forums (some adding a thousand+ new pages per day), not constantly lose home page PR?

Can Adding Pages To A Site Cause A Drop In Toolbar PR? No.

While I agree that you can postulate situations where this might happen, this should not be intrepreted as a general rule.

In general adding more pages gives you more PR to distribute around your site, and if you pay attention to your internal site linkage, your important pages should show a small rise in PR, though it probably cannot be measured by coarse tools like the toolbar.

If you choose to ignore or mismanage your internal site linking it should be readily apparent that it is not the added pages that are causing the PR drop, its the webmaster.

But if we are discussing something as trivial as can I postulate certain situations, where in unique circumstances thus and such might happen, then I suspect the greater good would be served by simply closing the thread.

Bob, are you maybe getting confused with the value of addition vs. the placement of a page?

If a page is placed within folders, of folders of folders, then each time it reduces to the new page for how far the page is away from the homepage in depth, but not how many pages are included. That is a Google thing anyway on how they derived page importance, not about numbers. You must keep the thinking on track that it is relative to each page, nothing more. How Google parse it internally and dilute it is no more than what we know, ref mentioned above, how far away it from the homepage. It is based on links. Links go up, PageRank goes up. Links go down, PageRank goes down. As mentioned about the internal linking structure.

You must remember how PageRank is derived! Backlinks! Do the math on the algorithm by adding pages to a site, then getting their true PR value that Google assigns, then using that within the equation, and your actual PR should begin to rise under normal circumstances. Mathematically speaking.

I used for an example adding 1 page to a 4 page site where each of the 4 pages has a toolbar PR8. Each page you add to your site adds the real PR value of 1 to the site.
Not to my understanding. Search engines, every time I ask them on this, continue to say that ranking is done on a page-by-page basis. With Google, this means your entire site doesn't have a PR score. Your home page does. Potentially, it should be possible to find a site where an internal page has a higher PR score than the home page.

adding pages to a site will NOT diminish the PR of the homepage one iota as far as I'm concerned...I don't think that adding pages to a site will cause the homepage PR to drop... I think that's carrying "PR leak" a bit too far

Bob, IMHO Marcia has nailed it. When you add new site pages, you may find some interior pages do lose PR. This , however, is not due to the fact the new pages have been added, but rather there is a fixed amount of home page PR to be passed.The addition of the new page diminishes the amount passed from the home page to each interior page. I do not see how this will mathematically affect the home page's PR.

Marcia: "How are you defining "real PR value"? And adding a page adds 1 to what?"
Real PR is the PR that is used for Ranking weight, the PR that one page votes to another page. Went I stated "real PR value" I am refering to the real PR value that each page starts out with which is 1.

"I think someone with a PR4 site could take that to mean that if they have a PR4, adding a page will add 1 and make it a PR5"
The only people that will do that is those that don't understand the difference between real PR and toolbar PR.

"Adding pages to a site will cause the PR of *which page* to drop?"
In the example that I used it it will cause the real PR of all the pages to drop even if it is only linked to anyone of the 4 pages only.

"I don't think that adding pages to a site will cause the homepage PR to drop. I think that's carrying "PR leak" a bit too far and is an erroneous assumption based on a severely flawed supposition."
I will explain how this happens. In my original example the site has 4 pages fully meshed. When page5 is added to the site and it is linked to page1 this page5 will now receive 1/4 of the real PR that Page1 has available to vote. The other 3 pages that before were getting each 1/3rd of the available PR Page1 has to vote will now only get 1/4th of the available real PR that Page1 votes.

While page5 will vote part of the real PR that is voted from Page1 back it retains a portions of it.

The additonal real PR of 1 that Page5 starts with will have no bearing on the matter as the real PR of a PR8 is some where in the milllions.

Marcia I also changed the description of the orgainal example so it is clearly. Thanks for pointing this out. Sometimes I forget people can't read my mind : )

Dave: "why do sites like this one, my site and hundreds of thousands of others that have active forums (some adding a thousand+ new pages per day), not constantly lose home page PR? "
Because the 1000's of pages are not linked to the home page. They are linked a general forms page.

Mel: "In general adding more pages gives you more PR to distribute around your site"
A new page only has a real PR of 1. In the over all scheme of things that is nothing when it comes to a site that has toolbar PR8 pages. The idea that you can increase toolbar PR by adding pages to your site is a myth. Unless of course you don't have any inbound links and you are trying to get a toolbar PR1.

Anthony: "Bob, are you maybe getting confused with the value of addition vs. the placement of a page?" Not at all. As noted in my above answer to Marcia even if you add a page and don't fully mesh it with all pages it is going to "drain" real PR from the other 4 pages.

"You must remember how PageRank is derived! Backlinks! Do the math on the algorithm by adding pages to a site, then getting their true PR value that Google assigns, then using that within the equation, and your actual PR should begin to rise under normal circumstances. Mathematically speaking."
I am very clear on how real PR is voted to a page. I have done the math using the algorithm when a new page is added to a site. In the above sample to Marcia I clearly noted that the new page has a real PR of 1 but it will receive 1/4 of the real PR available voted from Page1 but retains a certian amount when it votes back to Page1.

The other 3 pages in the site will now only get 1/4th of the available voted PR from Page1 where they were getting 1/3rd before the addition of page5. Yes real PR will rise if is you are looking at the total real PR all 5 pages have. But only by real PR of 1.

While the total real PR of all 5 pages raises by one this total real PR is now divided (not equally as the page that has the inbounds links providing the real PR will always be higher than the other pages) by 5 pages instead of 4 pages. The results will be that the orgainal 4 pages now have less real PR.

As you continue to add pages there will come a time when the real PR is diluted from the orginial 4 pages to the point where the real PR value they have will no longer be in the toolbar PR8 range and one or more of the orginial 4 pages real PR will drop into the range that is covered by the toolbar PR7.

dannysullivan: "Not to my understanding. Search engines, every time I ask them on this, continue to say that ranking is done on a page-by-page basis."
I agree that each page is ranked on a page by page basis.
But when people start claiming that you can increase the toolbar PR of your site by adding pages we have to look at the site as a whole and see what is happening when pages are added. Ian Rogers and Phil Cavens good articles, diagrams and calculations show how this works very clearly.


"Potentially, it should be possible to find a site where an internal page has a higher PR score than the home page."
In fact my on my seocompany.ca site the seo-tools.html internal page has a higher toolbar PR than my home page because I have lots of inbound links coming to that page and I have seen other sites in my travels that are the same.

Steve Sardell: "When you add new site pages, you may find some interior pages do lose PR."
I am not discussing interior pages. In my sample I have used a very simple 4 page site with a fully meshed link structure. I maintain when a page with a 2 way link is added to any of those 4 pages that all pages will have a drop in real PR.

Note:
I would like to state that the voting and passing of real PR and the changes in value don't happen real time. This all happens when a PR update is done. When a real PR update is done the real PR values change and when a toolbar PR update is done the toolbar PR changes. These used to both be done monthly but it looks like the toolbar PR update is gone quartely while the real PR update is still done monthly in my opinion.

Bob, over the course of the last year I have added at least 500 static URL pages all of which link to my Home page. This has at least doubled the size of my site, excluding the forum. In the last year I would been about static on incoming links and PR being passed, but I will err on the side of caution and say I have got an increase of 1-2 on my Toolbar PR.

My home page Toolbar PR was 5 it is now 7. How can this be, if adding pages that link to the home page, reduce Toolbar PR? This is not accounting for the fact that my Forum has added over 15,000 pages all which have a link to my home page in the header.

Sorry Bob but you are terribly confused on this issue.

First off you don't know what the real PR value of any page is, you are only guessing at it and calculations done using guessed at values are worthless when it comes to using the results thereof to prove something, especially when these guessed at values may be off by many orders of magnitude.

All we know is that the average of all PR values is one, and this being the case when a page is added to a site it is adding an average value equal to most other pages on the web. Note that this also implies that the average value of most web pages indexed by Google is less than one, not in the millions or billions. Thus the range of True PR could be in the range of 0 to 10 or it could be in the range of 0 to ten billion, we have no way of knowing except to guess.

As I have stated repeatedly in this thread, the PR value of any page on a site is a combination of the number and PR value of inbound links, plus the way this PR is managed internally within the site.

As a stupid example, but IMO just as valid as yours, let me assume that I have a one page site with a true PR value of one due to an inbound link and I then add another page and link that page to and from the home page. The PR value of the first page will now increase. Were I to follow your example I could now say that this proves that adding Pages to a site increases PR, but I won't go that far.

Your example assumption of a 4 page site with PR8 pages is so far from average that I have to question that as a unbiased example, but certainly using an unlikely site such as this together with calculations based on guessed at values proves exactly nothing.

Sorry to be so blunt Bob, but it seems the only way to get the point across clearly.

Mel: You have the right to your opinion and if you want to think that others that differ with you are "terribly confused" fill your boots. While I personally don't think you are terribly confused I will give you a heads up for what ever it is worth to you. If you start following around all my threads and make it your duty to correct me where ever you can and start with your "terribly confused" attacks on this forum you will find yourself on ignore the same way I have had to put you on ignore on 3 other forums where you followed my threads around taking a wack where ever you could.

I am here to help and learn. I disagree with many positions you take and not only your positions but the positions that others take also. I have never felt the need to tell people they are out to lunch, don't know what they are talking about, that they are terribly confused or other such language. In my opinion you have alot of head knowledge are well read and your are an asset on what ever forum you visit. I welcome any constructive posts from you but I will not respond to deriding posts.

Dave: "Bob, over the course of the last year I have added at least 500 static URL pages all of which link to my Home page."Ok will that will certianly not bleed any PR away from your site. I am talking about adding 2 way links to the home page. Not just pointing links to your home page.

"if adding pages that link to the home page, reduce Toolbar PR?" You may want to read abit closer. I have never forwarded this view.

Mel: You have the right to your opinion and if you want to think that others that differ with you are "terribly confused" fill your boots. While I personally don't think you are terribly confused I will give you a heads up for what ever it is worth to you. If you start following around all my threads and make it your duty to correct me where ever you can and start with your "terribly confused" attacks on this forum you will find yourself on ignore the same way I have had to put you on ignore on 3 other forums where you followed my threads around taking a wack where ever you could.

I am here to help and learn. I disagree with many positions you take and not only your positions but the positions that others take also. I have never felt the need to tell people they are out to lunch, don't know what they are talking about, that they are terribly confused or other such language. In my opinion you have alot of head knowledge are well read and your are an asset on what ever forum you visit. I welcome any constructive posts from you but I will not respond to deriding posts.


Then by all means respond to the facts posted in my provious post:

1. You do not know the true PR of any page, nor do you know how the toolbar PR is arrived at.
True or false?
2. The average PR of all pages on the web is one.
True or false?
3. The math in my one page going to two pages site is correct.
True or false?

By all means put me on ignore, which you have effectively done by failing to respond to anything but the confused comment in my last post, but I will continue to point out errors and misconceptions whenever I feel that it is in the best interest of the forum and its viewers to do so. I do not think that all who disagree with me are terribly confused Bob, only that you are on this particular topic.

Mel: Consider yourself on ignore then. I am interested in constuctive conversations.

Ok Bob, but it still doesn't add up. I have, in addition to what I stated, I also added a top level type site map to my home page. Why hasn't this done as you say? In other words, my home page has more link to inner pages now than 12 months ago. Are you also saying that if I removed 95% of these, my home page toolbar PR would increase?

I bet I could add another 100 links (Of course I wont though) and and no Toolbar PR drop would occur.

Dave: I haven't stated that adding pages to your home page will reduce your toolbar PR every time. I stated that it "can" reduce your home page toolbar PR. I have stated that it does reduce your home page real PR.
[doesn't corrected]

No I didn't say or don't hold that in all cases adding pages or reducing pages will change the toolbar PR. It will how ever change the real PR.

You have added another 100 pages to the home page and have no toolbar PR drop? What is your URL.

I state that it can reduce your home page toolbar PR Yes I know and I don't see this happening based on what I stated.

BTW, you are now saying something about adding pages to the home page. How on earth is that done?



I state that it can reduce your home page toolbar PR. I have stated that it doesn't reduce your home page real PR. Followed by;No I didn't say or don't hold that in all cases adding pages or reducing pages will change the toolbar PR. It will how ever change the real PR.

You have lost me Bob. No matter though as I really cannot see any point in this anyway. Carry on without me Bob....please.

[b]... I state that it can reduce your home page toolbar PR. I have stated that it doesn't reduce your home page real PR...


This is what I mean about confused, there must be a relationship between Real PR and Toobar PR even if we don't know what it is, and it follows that the toolbar PR can only drop if the real PR drops.

Dave: Yes I know and I don't see this happening based on what I stated.
"Can" just means that it is possible, not that it will happen all of the time or most of the time.

BTW, you are now saying something about adding pages to the home page. How on earth is that done? That would be done by a link from the page you are adding to the home page.

The real PR can change within the starting and ending range of a toolbar PR unit. It is only when real PR moves from one toolbar PR unit range to another that the toolbar PR will change.
"Carry on without me Bob....please." Not sure what you mean here. Would you perfer me not to respond to your comments you make to me or just your comments in general?

Just this Thread Bob as I wont be posting anymore in this Thread. I probably never should have chimed in on something that has no bearing on anything, i.e Toolbar PR.

"I state that it can reduce your home page toolbar PR. I have stated that it doesn't reduce your home page real PR."That was a miss spelling on my part sorry about that. I changed that on my orginal post. It should have read " I stated that it can reduce your home page toolbar PR. I have stated that it does reduce your home page real PR."

Here's what I've got personally, with two sites of my own that about doubled/tripled in size.

Site A had under 20 pages. I added pages, increasing to a total of 56 pages indexed. No change in PageRank.

Site B had around 20-25 pages, if that much. I added pages, increasing to a total of 70 pages indexed. No change in PageRank.

On those both, there have been no IBL's added but I've added a lot of outbounds throughout the site. Now it's wait and see if PR drops, and if it does how much. Not that it would tell a whole lot, since Toolbar PR is so inexact. But on both those sites, as well as another, adding pages had no impact whatsoever on PR.

Marcia: It is almost impossible to tell just looking at one site as the IBL could increase or decrease in the voted real PR so you could add pages 70 and see your toolbar PR drop from PR6 to PR5 but that wouldn't prove anything.

The only way to tell is to do a controlled study. 2 sites with the very same inbound links and one with for exampe 4 pages and the other with 12 or what ever.

I have seen this done and I saw the effect. Same inbound links, the 4 page site was PR8 on all four pages the 12 page site was PR7 all pages. The person was running 10 sites and had a site wide link to each site from two sites that each site had about 1 PR8s, 40 PR7s, 100 PR6s and 200 PR5s.

I still don't put alot of weigh in that as it is the equation that to me clearly shows that adding a fully meshed page to a site will dilute the PR on the home page.

Also I did a couple of tests in Phil Cravens PR calculator for what ever that is worth. The PR that is shown in this calculator is real PR. This link is to a fully meshed 8 page site with one inbound link to the home page (http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php?lnks=2,3,4,5,6,7,8,15,17,1 8,19,20,21,22,29,30,32,33,34,35,36,43,44,45,47,48, 49,50,57,58,59,60,62,63,64,71,72,73,74,75,77,78,85 ,86,87,88,89,90,92,99,100,101,102,103,104,105&ilnks=1&iblprs=&pgnms=&pgs=10&initpr=1&its=100&type=simple) and this is a fully meshed 9 page site with one inbound link to the home page (http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php?lnks=2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,15,17 ,18,19,20,21,22,23,29,30,32,33,34,35,36,37,43,44,4 5,47,48,49,50,51,57,58,59,60,62,63,64,65,71,72,73, 74,75,77,78,79,85,86,87,88,89,90,92,93,99,100,101, 102,103,104,105,107,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,12 0&ilnks=1&iblprs=&pgnms=&pgs=10&initpr=1&its=100&type=simple). You will note the home page drops from 1.2057325 to 1.1968927 when you add the additional fully meshed page to the site.
Note: Not sure why but the 2 above links are not showing the right calculations on IE. I will check this out in about an hour when I get back to the office and see how it looks on FF.


I tried adding a page with a 2 way link to the home page off a 8 page site with 1 inbound link with this calculator and it increased the home page. I am not sure why that is. I am going to ask Phil about that. I am quite sure that a 2 way link to the home page sould bleed PR from the home page.

Not just one Bob, I have never yet seen one site's homepage have a substantial drop as a result adding pages to the site. Messing up navigation by a webmaster per a client's insistence, yes - for internal pages and by excessive dilution - not the same thing.

The thread where this all started related to a site dropping from PR6 to PR4 - that kind of a drop will not happen as a result of adding pages. A drop can happen because of a lousy webmaster or a lousy SEO or a lousy client.

But there would have to be a drastic modification of a site's navigation to cause that drastic a drop - which has nothing to do with adding pages, and is still unlikely to cause that type of sharp drop.

As far as TBPR is concerned, that is logarithmic and we can only see rounded numbers from the green graph, which is a rough estimate. Surely $5.95 is more than $5.05 if we use it as an analogy, but we cannot see that -all we see is 5 which is more than 4 and less than 6.

There *are* people who can figure it exactly, but for all practical purposes that's irrelevant because we are not doing that here and I don't believe we have anyone present who does those type of calculations. We are merely debating whether or not adding pages will cause a site to lose PR.

OK - let's narrow it. Let's call main index page Page_A - it links to a subdirectory called Directory_B. We add 10 pages to Directory_B that link to each other, back to the index page of Directory_B and back to the main index Page_A as well. Will that lower the PR of the main site index page? Will it? Which pages will it cause to lose PR? Nothing fancy - just a simple reply will do.

What we need to focus on for PR within a site is its proper distribution thoughout a site - how the PR is channeled and routed. If there is a drop - AGAIN - it is NOT because of adding pages, it is because the webmaster did not know how to properly adapt the navigation to make maximum usage of the available PR within a site.

It is NOT a PageRank issue - it is a navigation issue and an issue of a webmaster not having sufficient understanding of PR and, quite frankly, screwing it all up with the navigation.

There is where the line divides between the Google-savvy and the non-Google savvy for internal website optimization. No fancy maths, just plain old common sense.

Marcia: Well the topic was things that can cause your TBPR to drop. One of those things is adding pages to your site. You have a 6 or 7 page site fully meshed off the menu and you add another page or 2 to the menu it will cause the over all real PR to drop. It will only cause the toolbar PR to drop if the real PR is very close to the bottom of the toolbar unit. If your real PR is at the upper end of the toolbar unit, adding a page or two fully meshed is not going to drop the toolbar PR. Again keep in mind I said adding pages "can" not "would" cause a drop in TB PR.

If I understand your example you have a child page with 10 pages fully meshed with a 2 way link to your home page. That would be pretty well the same as a single page with a two way link to your home page. Will that page bleed real PR from you home page? Yes. Can it cause the TRPR on the home page to drop? Yes. What are the odds of it happening? It would depend on the size of the site. The larger the number of pages linked to the home page the less the change of a TBPR drop. Also the home page real PR would need to be very close to the bottom toolbar PR scale unit so the bleed would be enough to drop the home page into the unit below. But it could happen.

This would happen more often with a site that has less pages linked to the home page. Take a 4 page site that is fully meshed and no external links and a number of high TB PR IBL to the home page. Before you add a page the 3 pages linked to the home page are getting 1/3rd of the voted PR from the home page. Add one page with a 2 way link and those 3 pages are not getting 1/4th of the vote. Add another page and the orginal pages now get 1/5th. Add a total of 8 pages and they are getting 1/11th. Now getting 1/11th of the real PR vote from the home page compared to 1/3rd is a big difference. Enough to drop you down a TB PR unit? Yes quite easily.

Take a larger site with 30 pages that are all TBPR7s, connected to the home page with 2 way links. You have a number of high TB PR links coming into the home page. Each page is getting 1/29th of the vote. You add 1 page, and there is very little change. Different between 1/29th and 1/30th which is 0.115%. The difference of the real PR voted when you add 1 page to the 4 page site is 8.33% (1/3rd vss 1/4th). So you see the effect of adding 1 page to a 4 page site and 1 page to a 30 page site is quite different. The effect adding one page has to the 4 page site is 72 times greater than adding it to a 30 page site. The smaller the site, the greater the effect.

So back to the orginial comment. Adding pages to your site "can" cause the TB PR to drop.

Note: The above calculations don't take into consideration the PR that is voted back by the pages. So after 40 to 100 iterations the effects are not going to be as much as the 1 iteration I have showed above.

If you set up your site linkage in less than optimal fashion (such as a fully meshed site) and you add pages in a certain way under certain conditions, it is possible that the PR of an individual page will drop, but it is also true that if you use a different site linkage it will cause the PR of the same page to rise. It is also true that adding pages increase the sum of the PR of all the pages in the site that you have to work with, it will never decrease it.

You are saying that the drop is caused by adding pages to a site, I am saying that the drop is caused by less than optimal linking.

A Few Examples With Diagrams & PR Formula

I when ahead and worked out a few calculations to verify that what I have been claiming is true. Most small sites have a linking structure that is fully meshed. I have in this thread put forth that adding more pages to your menu will dilute the real PR of the current pages. It seems like some are willing to accept that but they seem to be saying that the real PR is dropping in this case because of poor linking structure.

So I when ahead and put together some examples and calculations to show that adding pages to your home page with 2 way links will dilute all the other pages real PR that have two way links to the home page.

In the following 4 samples you will see a small increase in the home page real PR but in the subpages you will see a drop of up to a factor of 10.


3 Page Site & The Real PageRank After 40 Interations

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcx.gif
The first example is a 3 page site with page "x" having an inbound link to the home page "a" and the home page "a" with 2 way links to 2 subpages "b" and "c". Page "x" has a real PR of 1000 at the start of the first iteration and pages "a", "b" and "c" start out with 0. After 40 iterations the home page "a" has a real PR value of 3064 and the subpages have a real PR value of 1302.

See links that shows iterations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank2.pl) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank2.pl.txt).


4 Page Site & The Real PageRank After 40 Interations

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcdx.gif
The next example is a 4 page site with page "x" having an inbound link to the home page "a" and the home page "a" with 2 way links to 3 subpages "b", "c" and "d". Page "x" has a real PR of 1000 at the start of the first iteration and pages "a", "b", "c" and "d" start out with 0. After 40 iterations the home page "a" has a real PR value of 3064 and the subpages have a real PR value of 869.

See links that shows iterations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank3.pl) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank3.pl.txt).


5 Page Site & The Real PageRank After 40 Interations

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcdex.gif
The next example is a 5 page site with page "x" having an inbound link to the home page "a" and the home page "a" with 2 way links to 4 subpages "b", "c", "d" and "e". Page "x" has a real PR of 1000 at the start of the first iteration and pages "a", "b", "c", "d" and "e" start out with 0. After 40 iterations the home page "a" has a real PR value of 3065 and the subpages have a real PR value of 651.

See links that shows iterations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank4.pl) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank4.pl.txt).


21 Page Site & The Real PageRank After 40 Interations

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abc-ux.gif

The next example is a 21 page site with page "x" having an inbound link to the home page "a" and the home page "a" with 2 way links to 20 subpages "b" to "u". Page "x" has a real PR of 1000 at the start of the first iteration and pages "a" to "u" start out with 0. After 40 iterations the home page "a" has a real PR value of 3072 and the subpages have a real PR value of 130.

See links that shows iterations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank20.pl) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank20.pl.txt).


4 Page Site Fully Meshed & The Real PageRank After 40 Interations

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/fm-abcdx.gif

This example is a 4 page fully meshed site with page "x" having an inbound link to the home page "a". Page "x" has a real PR of 1000 at the start of the first iteration and pages "a", "b", "c" and "d" start out with 0. After 40 iterations the home page "a" has a real PR value of 1914 and the subpages have a real PR value of 1252.

See links that shows iternations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/fullymeshed4.pl) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/fullymeshed4.pl.txt).


5 Page Site Fully Meshed & The Real PageRank After 40 Interations

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/fm-abcdex.gif

This example is a 5 page fully meshed site with page "x" having an inbound link
to the home page "a". Page "x" has a real PR of 1000 at the start of the first iteration and pages "a", "b", "c", "d" and "e" start out with 0. After 40 iterations the home page "a" has a real PR value of 1695 and the subpages have a real PR value of 994.

See links that shows iternations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/fullymeshed5.pl) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/fullymeshed5.pl.txt).


What Do These Diagrams Show Us?

Well I think it is pretty clear when you add pages via a two way link to the home page of a website that the real PR of the other subpage will drop.

Also when you fully mesh a page into a site that has a fully meshed link structure the real PR of all pages goes now.



Check My Numbers On Phil Cravens PR Calculator

If you would like to check out my calculations you can drop over to Phil Cravens site and take his Google RageRank Calculator (http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php) for a spin.

At first when I ran two ways links to the home page on Cravens RP Calculator I didn't believe the numbers when the home page when up slowly with each 2 way link that was added (the other subs dropped for course). So I set out and did up the formulas my self and get the very same number.


Try Finding A Linking Structure That Doesn't Bleed PR

When you try out differnet linking structures make sure you have the home page an inbound PR of around 1000. The calculations of sites where they are only dealing with there own real PR of 1 don't produce the same numbers. You should also turn the Mode Selector to Real Mode that that the calculation will not pick up one way links or orphans. The Simple Mode will include them into the calculations but as Google drops them you don't want to be looking at calculations that won't happen.

Again when you add pages with at least a 2 way link (one way links are orphans) to a site that has a high PR home page it really doesn't matter where you place them you are aways going to decrease the real PR of some of the pages on the site. Even if you select one page of the sub pages and hang 2 way links of it. It will still decrease the real PR on the home page.

The only combination that I have been able to find that doesn't decrease the real PR on your home page is when you add 2 way links directly to the home page. But when you do this it will decrease the PR of the other subpages. Even when you add a 2 way link to a subpage that has a two way link to the home page the home page real PR drops.

Have fun with the calculator and hopefully this clears up this issue seeing how there is nowmath to support what I have been saying.

Bob, your position on PR dropping because pages have been added seems to be as intractable as it is incorrect. The only example given where I can buy your theory, is where a website has nearly every page linked to every other page, and that is a technique that will give *much* less than optimal results for PR under almost any circumstances.

And yes, assuming a few external BLs to the home page, then continuing to expand the site by adding pages and then linking them in such a foolish manner may chip away at the PR. But I don't see how that one narrow example supports a broad statement that "more pages = less PR" which simply is not the case.

JohnW: What is hard about manageing my position. I have now gone ahead and used the PR algo formula and shown clearly how adding pages to the home page by a 2 way link causes the other subpages to drop in their real PR. I have put up the formulas and a small bit of code to print out the iternations for each page so you can see how it goes. And you still can't see it? Is there a problem with the math? Is the wrong formula used?

The only example given where I can buy your theory, is where a website has nearly every page linked to every other page, and that is a technique that will give *much* less than optimal results for PR under almost any circumstances. I suggest you look at the example above. A site with a home page and pages that are linked to the home page by 2 way links. Every time you add a page the other sub pages drop in real PR. What problem to you see with the above example.

And yes, assuming a few external BLs to the home page, then continuing to expand the site by adding pages and then linking them in such a foolish manner may chip away at the PR. How would you set up a simple 8 pages site? What would you consider the best way to do the linking structure. And after you have that set up if you need to add 4 pages how would you add them?

But I don't see how that one narrow example supports a broad statement that "more pages = less PR" which simply is not the case. You need to read the beginning of the thread. Or even the title. It says Can Adding Pages To A Site Cause a Drop In Toolbar PR. No where have I stated that adding pages will cause you toolbar PR to drop every time. I did how ever say that adding pages can be one of the reasons it drops. That is how this thread started.

Bob, you are obviously an extreemly intelligent person who is very dedicated to this biz, but I think you have missed a few things on this one. Take a look at this link, which offers some well thought-out diagrams that explain PR contribution within a website. I would look forward to your comments.

http://www.abcseo.com/seo-book/page-rank.htm

JohnW: Nice site. I read the article and it is very much along the line of the articles on PageRank by Phil Craven, Ian Rogers, Markus Sobek and Chris Riding.

There are a couple of errors in the article and perhaps one thing I would have done a bit different. The article notes that Yahoo has a real PR in the billions which is impossible, its PR calculations are off on Figure 7, and I would introduce the concepts of visible PR and real PR so those reading the article won't mistake the real PR values shown in the diagrams and calculations as toolbar PR values.

(I have found this to be a lack in most of the articles that go about dealing with PR transfer with diagrams. They don't deal with the issue of real PR and toolbar PR and the person reading the articles is left with the idea that by adding a few pages there toolbar PR will go from 1 to 3 or 4.)

For Yahoo to have a real PR in the billions is impossible seeing how there is only 8 billon pages in the index. Yahoo dropped down to the TBPR9 on Nov 5/2004 but I have no doubt it is a very strong PR9 and I expect it to go back up to a PR10 shortly.

There are more than 142 TB PR10 pages which would all have more PR that Yahoo's home page does. If Yahoo has billions of real PR, which means 2 billion or more, then all PR10 pages would have at least that much or move. This creates a big problem. All the 142 TBPR10 pages including the Yahoo page would add up to 286 billion real PR but there is only 8 billion real PR available. I thing the writer of the article probably meant to say millions or either they are lacking on a clear understanding of PR.

There appear to be a error in the calculation on Figure 7 where the writer make the calculation for the outbound link as a orphan. The home page should show a 3.02 not 3.31 and the 3 subpages should be 0.79 not 1.09. An outbound link to another site and an orphan are calculated differently.

The site has an article on Cross Linking abcseo.com/seo-book/cross-linking.htm and in Figure 1 it shows the very same thing I have been noting in my posts. Adding 2 way links to any page in your site will dilute the PR of the other pages.

I have the inbound link feeding my diagrams real PR of 1000 so that people will not get confused between TR PR and Real PR in the diagrams. If you check the diagrams over at abcseo.com you will see that they show the same thing. Adding a 2 way link to a sub page will decrease the home page and some of the subpages Real PR.

Adding Pages To SubPage By Two Way Links

Here is 4 more diagrams and with a bit of code to show the iterations and a link to the code that produces those iterations so you make I am doing my calculations right. At this point I am now looking to see if I can find any configuration that will let you add 2 Way or Meshed Linked pages with out a loss of real PR to the home page and/or subpages. (I changed the code to work out the iterations for this group to PHP.)

4 Page Site Before Adding 2 Way Links to Subpage

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcdx.gif

See links that shows iternations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3.php) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3.phps).



4 Page Site With 1 - 2 Way Link On Subpage

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcd-sex.gif

See links that shows iternations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3-se.php) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3-se.phps).


4 Page Site With 2 - 2 Way Link On Subpage

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcd-sefx.gif

See links that shows iternations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3-sef.php) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3-sef.phps).



4 Page Site With 3 - 2 Way Link On Subpage

http://www.seocompany.ca/images/abcd-sefgx.gif

See links that shows iternations (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3-sefg.php) and the source (http://www.carsinlondon.com/pagerank/pagerank3-sefg.phps).



By the way my finding are not new. While I orginially found out how adding pages can drop TRPR and hence Real PR by experience, PR experts and people involved in the text link ad industry have been aware of this for a long time. This is no new discovery and I consider the things I have been presenting in this thread be ABC's in PR.

I am not saying that to take a wack at those that have disagree with me but it's just a fact. Any one that has even taken the time to read the main articles that are out there and has done there home work should see this. Even the site you just asked me to look at shows this same thing and comments on it.

"If you refer to the examples in the PageRank section you will see that the effect of adding a link to an external page boosts the PageRank of that page but dilutes PageRank available to the rest of the site." This is the paragraph before Figure 1 is shown www.abcseo.com/seo-book/cross-linking.htm (http://www.abcseo.com/seo-book/cross-linking.htm)

While the comment doesn't make it clear the diagram does. Compare the diagram in the above link with the diagram in Figure 3 that is in the orginial document you asked me to look at. www.abcseo.com/seo-book/page-rank.htm (http://www.abcseo.com/seo-book/page-rank.htm)

The link the writer comments on when he say "adding a link to an external page" is a 2 way link and the calculation he has used is the same where it is considered an external link or an internet like. In this case the added 2 way link on one of the subpages drops the home page real PR from a 4.98 to 4.36 and 2 of the subpages drop from 1.56 to 1.37.

Now this doesn't seem to be much of a drop but feed a real PR value of 100,000 into the home page and you will see how big a drop adding a 2 way page to a subpage can make.

Mark Sobek's article, which I consider the most advanced articles I have named in this post (see links at the bottom of this post) , even has a section called "The Reduction of PageRank by Additional Pages". While I don't agree with all the positions he takes in his article, he does come out and clearly state "Since adding pages to a site often reduces PageRank for already existing pages, it becomes obvious that the PageRank algorithm tends to privilege smaller web sites." http://www.miswebdesign.com/resources/articles/pagerank-6.html


Phil Craven's article is quite short but still its very clear that he has a good grasp on PageRank. In his "Google PageRank Explained", he also brings out that adding pages to a site one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss.

"The new page will, of course, aquire PageRank from the site's existing pages. The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains."

Ian Rogers in his article "The Google Pagerank Algorithm and How It Works" shows how you can return link 1000 pages from a one page and then link that page to the home page and product a real PR of 331 on the home page in Example 13 as seen at this link http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/. The problems with this sample are numerous. First its spam (which is notes), 2nd the Google bot is going to cough at a page with 1000 links on it, and 3rd, in the scheme of things real PR of 331 is nothing. One inbound link from a PR4 will give you that. Baring that issue Ian's article is one of the better article out there.

Chris Riding's makes the statement in his article that "Fundamentally, however, adding extra internal links to your outbound pages is one of the most (if not the most) important internal factors to improve you PageRank." Page 27 http://www.voelspriet2.nl/PageRank.pdf . This is a good point and gets me to add another item to the "Things that can cause yoru TBPR to drop" list.

Things that can cause your TB PR to drop
9. Removing of internal links from pages that have external links. (Internal links on pages that have your most external links will change the about of PR voted off site.)

Check out my list of Things that can cause your Toolbar PR to drop (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=26173&postcount=53) over on the Examining Reasons Why Page Rank Can Drop or Change (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2507) thread.

Related Links:
A Survey of Google's PageRank (http://pr.efactory.de/) by Markus Sobek (PR Expert) - One the better articles on PR.
The Google Pagerank Algorithm and How It Works (http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank) by Ian Rogers (PR Expert) - Another high quality article.
Google's PageRank Explained (http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html) by Phil Craven (PR Expert) - shorter but a good article.
Page Rank Uncovered (http://www.voelspriet2.nl/PageRank.pdf) by Chris Ridings (PR Expert) and Mike Shishigin (55 Page PDF) - Very technical.
Google PageRank Calculator (http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php) by Phil Craven - Best PR Calculation tool on the internet!
Google PageRank and How to Get It (http://www.compar.com/infopool/articles/PR-calculation.html) by Bob Wakfer - takes a stab at showing how many PRx to get a PRx - Important Read.