Evaporating PR & PageRank Sculpting

The nofollow links that we use to conserve and spread PageRank (PR) have been declared null and void by Google… or have they?

First Google's position - at least according to Matt Cutts - was that PR sculpting was ok. Advanced SEOs should take advantage of it.

Now Google's dancing another tune. The PR that would have spread to links by blocking others with nofollow, no longer happens. Matt Cutts says the PR just, "evaporates."

We'll that's not exactly true. It has to go somewhere. Unless they run an entirely different set of filters on top of the webmap that PR creates, then filter out all the nofollows… which is not very likely because its a slow process.

The only place PR can go is a feedback loop. After a dampening factor (to prevent infinite loops) PR leaks out back into the index, to be recalculated and spread among all pages in a recursive fashion.

The only trouble with that hypothesis, is that we haven't seen the massive change in PR distribution. If nofollow on internal links is so evil, why are so many sites unaffected in their rankings?

Think of all the huge 100K page sites like Amazon and majority of blogs like TechCrunch that use nofollow. There would have been massive sweeping changes across the entire web.

Cricket… cricket… cricket…

Apparently Google started discounting nofollow links a year ago. No one noticed.

So until you see any massive changes, maintain the status quo. If you have a site you're happy with, or starting a new site, and haven't been PR sculpting, don't start.

If you've been sculpting with nofollow or normal links, and it's still appears to be working, go ahead and keep doing it. You won't get any SEO boost by undoing all the nofollow links.

In fact, you might even break something in the process and loose your rankings. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Google's algorithm is like a fugitive. It's always on the run. It remains elusive, doing whatever it can to shake the SEO dogs off its trail.

The evaporating PR statement is like doubling back on the trail. The good bloodhounds will always pick up the scent. Which way did they go boys? Arrrooooh! Arrrooooh!

Further Reading:

1) Andy Beard's Internet Business Systems Blog (It's a good idea to subscribe to Andy's RSS feed while you're there. His content is always top notch.)

2) SEO Blog Nofollow is Dead (Quote… "Mr. Cutts attempts to ridicule the SEO industry by blaming it not to have noticed that nofollow has been abandoned a year ago and it hurts your site since then to PageRank sculpt your internal links with the nofollow attribute.")

3) Search Engine Land (The rise and fall of PageRank Sculpting.)

4) Matt Cutts Blog (Here the dust finally settles as Matt Cutts tries to set the record straight by saying, "I just want to reiterate that even though this feels like a huge change to a certain segment of SEOs, in practical terms this change really doesn't affect rankings very much at all.")

(What's odd is, they still kinda recommend sculpting, but not as a priority. Matt says, "The notion of "PageRank sculpting" has always been a second or third order recommendation for us.")

Sheesh… clear as mud… the fugitive just dashed across the creek and sprinkled black pepper to cover his scent. Which way did they go boys? Arrrooooh! Arrrooooh!

(If you read between the lines here… Matt doesn't say, PageRank sculpting "used to be" no… he says "has always been." Which a pretty ambiguous way of stating the present tense. But he also says sculpting was… or is… as in "always been" a recommendation.)

(So Google isn't saying they don't sculpt. It's just not a priority. What is a priority? According to Matt, it's good link-worthy content, a fully spiderable site, and then…. sculpting. He also states that we should link to our most important pages from our home page… which in itself is a form of sculpting.)

And for those of you keeping score…

I've been "sculpting PageRank" or "aiming link popularity" since September 1998, when I used to do it for SEO clients. By setting up multiple sites or mininets, I was able to control most of the offpage and onpage factors that contribute to higher rankings in the search engines.

If you want to read the original whitepaper that started the whole concept of "aiming link popularity" it can be found in Revenge of the Mininet. The first draft was published in this newsletter on July 24 2001, but it wasn't officially released to the public until March 1 2003.

Later that year - five years after I created the mininet concept - Leslie Rohde offered to "do the math" to prove my theories. Luckily the numbers don't lie, my tests were correct. Sculpting works.

With confirmation in hand, on May 28 2003, I released his whitepaper Dynamic Linking as a companion to Revenge. A few years later, the nofollow tag was implemented and people began calling it PR Sculpting.

Note that Revenge doesn't use Javascript or nofollow. It uses normal links to "sculpt" link popularity. And if you listen closely to the video on Andy Beard's site (link 1 above) you'll hear Matt Cutts telling you that it still works. Arrrooooh! Arrrooooh!

Want Revenge? You can download it below.

Please note: This is your very last chance to download Revenge of the Mininet from this page, before I tuck it away in the Vault… or put it back on the market. Either way, if you want to get it, go get it now. In a couple of days from now it will be gone.

Wishing you all the best for online success,

Michael Campbell