> JLH - If Google punishes sites that hord PR why does Wikipedia
> (educational), Amazon (affiliate) and other eCommerce sites doing so
> well in search engines?

> If you look athttp://solar.rain-barrel.netand any other of my sites
> you will see that I am doing nothing to game search engines at all but
> also notice the PR, how much do I have to share? >> Is PR finite? <<

> Sebastian - You said" "In the case of linking to a site plastered with
> affiliate links and
> ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you
> don't like them?"

> Say I find a farmer/inventor who doesn't have a website but his new
> wind turbine was written about on a local news site that is littered
> with paid links and it's "SEO" is linking out with hidden text to
> viagra spam. I want to write about this man who is offering something
> unique but the only reference I can find is on this local spammy news
> site. Wouldn't this be a case when the nofollow tag should be used?

> Here is another one: Say I write about a cool company that is looking
> to market complete solar arrays but when I review the company I find
> that they have multiple sites and I just do not have time to analyse
> their intent, wouldn't it be safer to use a nofollow here?

> I do not spam or use the nofollow to spam BUT if I understand it
> correctly what it does is break the connection between you and the
> possible bad neighborhoods that can have indirect negative impact on a
> websites "trust" or whatever you want to call it.

> One more thought: Did you guys ever think that our debates actually
> build better algorithms? Are there people in white coats with clip
> boards taking notes? You guys got all kind of interesting ideas,
> that's fo' sho', thanks! :)

> On Feb 15, 11:53 am, Sebastian wrote:

> > In the case of linking to a site plastered with affiliate links and
> > ads, where is the point to write about them in the first place, if you
> > don't like them? Well, given that this site has a page hosting
> > valuable information, wouldn't it be the search engine's job to allow
> > or disallow incoming PageRank at this site? Why should you pre-qualify
> > links for Google's ranking algo? This attitude smells like self-
> > censorship based on fear, and you shouldn't fear Google when you link
> > out.

> > Applying nofollow crap to affiliate links is a completely other story.
> > I have no problem with Google's position that affiliate links should
> > not carry Googlejuice, but just the human traffic. I say "nofollow
> > crap" because rel=nofollow is IMHO not the suitable instrument to
> > achieve this particular effect, or call it favour to the engines. I
> > use rel=nofollow with affiliate links to save my own ass, although
> > it's Google's job to decide whether a particuilar link should carry
> > weight or not, and although I do think that rel=nofollow is not the
> > right thing to use in this case.

> > All this thoughts and countless confused discussions are results of
> > the somewhat hapless implementation of this crawler directive, and
> > it's ongoing semantic morphing. Sure, rel=nofollow is a generic
> > mechanism to do a ton of things which all make sense. But it's a geeky
> > tool for search geeks, not a suitable tool for webmasters, editors, or
> > publishers.

> > Ok, back to PageRank. Think of PR as a statistical approach to emulate
> > Joe A. Surfer's behaviour, where the middel initial stands for
> > Average. PR just tries to follow Joe's footsteps on the Web, sometimes
> > guessing whether Joe will click link A or B, thus deducting both
> > possible click-paths' scores equally. PR is a model of the Web, kinda
> > road map from any point to any point, weighting each and every path/
> > lane's quality by scoring the destination. And because it's just a
> > model, it's weight as ranking factor is not that important as the
> > toolbar suggests. The PR hysteria reminds me of the Beatles BTW. Sure
> > PR is great, it's sexy and all that, but it doesn't show the (whole)
> > big picture one has to think of when it comes to optimizing contents.
> > Hence optimize for visitors, remember the visitors pull out the
> > plastic, not the bots, create broad and easy to walk paths through
> > your contents all leading to your signup forms. PR will follow the
> > visitors to honor your efforts not only with green pixels. IOW since
> > todays PR is Google's secret sauce, and there are other important link
> > cargos, it just makes not much sense to speculate about PR
> > distribution. PR is addicting and distracting, hence you should ignore
> > it to get your job done.

> > Sebastianhttp://sebastianx.blogspot.com/

> > On Feb 15, 4:57 pm, JLH wrote:

> > > Aaron you bring up a good point.  A while back when some sort of
> > > penalty was being dolled out Adam repeatedly said here and other
> > > forums that one factor may be "Over Optimization."  To me a site that
> > > has all external links nofollowed is ripe to be picked in an
> > > algorithim for over optimizations because of the un-naturalness of
> > > it.  It's a strong signal of two things 1) this guy doesn't trust
> > > anyone he's linking to or 2) this guy is trying to hoard page rank.
> > > Neither is a signal that should help a site rank for anything.

> > > Back in the day search engines ranked based on the text only, keyword
> > > counts etc.  People started repeating "free porn" 900 times on a page,
> > > then they started looking at the META data people started stuffing
> > > them, links were good so people started selling them, in all cases
> > > google reacted and penalized the offending sites.  Nofollow was
> > > introduced as a tool to help eliminate the value that blog comments,
> > > message boards, forums, etc where having on the ranking of sites.  If
> > > you're the site owner and didn't write the content you have a way of
> > > saying I cannot vouch for what's there.  I would bet that if someone
> > > tries to turn that around and use it to IMPROVE their page rank,
> > > they'll get busted.  Just as using your keywords in sentences is good
> > > but repeating them 100 times and abusing the H tags is bad.

> > > Another thing to consider is from the inherent nature of the "web"
> > > sites are not meant to be islands but rather connected to the whole
> > > internet by both incoming and outgoing links.  A site is judged not
> > > only by the content and anchor text of incoming links but the topical
> > > nature of the sites linking in and the topical sites that you link
> > > to.  If you have all nofollow links you are missing a key ingredient
> > > to telling Google what the site is about.

> > > I don't have any insider knowledge, but given enough time patterns
> > > will emerge in the mass of data that they pour over every day, and I
> > > wouldn't doubt a signal they will look at is your linking habbits and
> > > the use/abuse of the nofollow tag.  PR hoarders will be penalized as
> > > its a breakdown in the natural flow of the web.  It's like the wiki
> > > debate, if they don't trust any of their resources then they shouldnt
> > > be trusted as one themselves.  Of course they've got enough momentum
> > > that their probably impervious to any sort of algo change, but smaller
> > > sites are.

> > > So where is the line between SEO and SEOO (search engine over-
> > > optimization)?  I'm not sure, but as Adam also says, "does it pass the
> > > smell test?"  And saying, "I changed all my links to nofollow so I
> > > don't leak page rank" smells like you are trying to game the system
> > > and artificially influence googles ranking, which in  my experience
> > > they frown upon and react.

> > > Personally, I always have nofollow links highlighted in my browser
> > > with a bright red box.  If I stumble upon a site that has too many, I
> > > move on, I wouldn't doubt google takes that stance sometime in the
> > > future.  I just don't trust the nofollow actions yet, and I think its
> > > going to get worse.  If you really want a bunch of sites that you link
> > > to be not followed for ranking purposes (affiliate links, selling
> > > links for traffic only, etc) I'd put those on a redirection hidden
> > > behind the robots.txt.  That way Google isn't going to follow them at
> > > all because they aren't going to see them, and they are not going to
> > > be able to hold it against you because there is no possible good that
> > > can come from a page that is not crawlable.  As far as a site with no
> > > eternal links, I'd say that's just as shady as disabling the back
> > > button, the site is no longer a part of the web, but only a town where
> > > all the streets going to it are one way, and after a while people will
> > > notice that no one returns from that town, and no one will go there
> > > anymore.

> > > Now I doubt Adam will/can come on here and say that they penalize or
> > > don't penalize or give credit for the use of nofollow as commenting on
> > > the actual ranking is probably not allowed in the least bit, but these
> > > are my two cents :)

> > > On Feb 15, 9:18 am, Sebastian wrote:

> > > > Aaron, you shoot yourself in both feet. PageRank hoarding is a sin. PR
> > > > is a sexy fay you should not pass, that's way to rough. Let her flood
> > > > your site, let her come and go as she decides, don't even think of her
> > > > when you deploy links. And please remove the f** nofollow values in
> > > > your rel attributes, that's unethical and counter productive.
> > > > Really :)
> > > > Here is more info:http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=155&page=100
> > > > Sebastian

> > > > On Feb 15, 4:02 pm, Admin Aaron wrote:

> > > > > I am wondering is PR is finite? Websites that do not do link building
> > > > > and obtain backlinks in a natural organic way often have very few
> > > > > incoming links which means lower pagerank.

> > > > > I have a few blogs in the renewable energy area where I find, review
> > > > > and write about companies, people and technology I believe will
> > > > > encourage the growth of alternative energy.

> > > > > I am generous and link out to others but sinse the site is new and
> > > > > relatively

> ...

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