> > It would seem that if you decide to remove a page, its PageRank is
> > tossed to the wind but if Google decides to not index a given page,
> > any PageRank it has would seem to be retained and its links used to
> > determine PageRank of other pages.

> Just a guess:

> I assume that with "decide to remove a page" you mean the URL removal
> function? I am pretty certain that this is not a real URL removal from
> the "database", but rather just a filter applied before the search
> results are shown.

> Additionally, I feel that the link lists for pagerank calculations are
> independent of the indexed pages. Pages can have pagerank when they
> don't even exist (even when the domain name does not exist). I bet
> that if a page has been crawled and outbound links were known, those
> links would pass pagerank even if the page ceased to exist (as long as
> it was in the pagerank link lists). That would be similar to the
> "noindex, follow" robots meta-tag.

> I wonder (never a good sign).. assuming there is a high-value page
> that links to your site. Would it be better for your site if that page
> was removed (404 or URL removal tool) or if the links were removed? My
> guess is that a missing page would still pass value, while a page with
> no known outbound links wouldn't.  But then again, that effect is
> bound to be very temporary :-P.

> I'm not sure how that would change anything though :-))

> John