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As I am sure everyone in our industry is now aware, there is some very bad advice circulating in the SEO community about “Sculpting PageRank”. Even though it might look like Google finally slapped down the concept, it appears to me there are still some hardcore advocates who continue to preach the philosophy in secret. They may even be working on a new euphemism to disguise their intent.

Let’s face it: there will always be high profile advocates of dumb ideas in every industrial and political spectrum. Still, Google makes it clear they require some PageRank for sites that want to appear in the Main Web Index.

The Isolation of PageRank
PageRank is an entirely Googlian element. You won’t find it in other search engines like Ask, Bing, and Yahoo!. Oh, you’ll find something at each search engine that measures link value — but it’s not Google’s PageRank. PageRank is unique to Google and here is why: Google calculates its PageRank based on the data it collects (data that Google does not share with other search engines) and on the filters it employs (filters that other search engines do not use).

Since you don’t have access to that data or those filters, you have no way of knowing which links Google allows to pass value in its search index — hence, you cannot track and measure PageRank. Nor can you track and measure the other PageRank-like values used by Ask, Bing, and Yahoo!. You can collect your own data, implement your own filters, but you can only create your own PageRank-like value — you cannot track and measure PageRank that way.

How Well Can You Manage PageRank?
Imagine being given the task of altering the course of the mighty Nile and Mississippi rivers. You have immense resources at your command. You have the ability to create dikes, dams, canals, etc. Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to look at the rivers or to use scientific instruments to measure their capacities, rates of flow, etc. You have to blindly tell people what to do and those people are not permitted to tell you what happens when they follow your orders.

You do get some feedback. You can read news reports about where the rivers flood and which communities have access to water — but the reports are only published 4 to 6 times a year.

That’s a poor system for managing two huge natural resources but in this scenario you do manage them. You’re just not in a position to manage them well. That’s what happens when people go to extreme efforts to manage PageRank.

How People Can Manage PageRank
After all this time we’ve found only two ways to manage PageRank on our Web sites: add more links to increase PageRank distribution and remove internal links to restrict PageRank distribution. We have embellished both approaches with some variations. We can:

• Get more external links to point toward deep content
• Get more external links to point toward our root URLs
• Use “rel=’nofollow’” to prevent PageRank from flowing through our links
• Use “nofollow” in page meta tags to prevent PageRank from flowing through our links

Google of course recently shut down all attempts to restrict PageRank flow through Javascript, since Google now follows Javascript links. Some ideas never really worked, although people have proposed using them to manage PageRank flow. For example, using “noindex,noarchive” in your page meta tags won’t prevent those pages from accruing PageRank. If you don’t link out from the pages the PageRank will “evaporate” — more or less be distributed to the rest of the PageRank-receiving documents in Google’s index.

Some people have suggested using robots.txt files to disallow pages — but that doesn’t prevent them from accruing PageRank either. The fact is, if a value-passing link points at a document, that document will receive value. All you can do at that point is decide where to send the value next.

How You CANNOT Manage PageRank
Some people point to Google’s classic PageRank algorithm and say, “Well, they included this dampening factor that reduces PageRank as it flows through the system”. Therefore, they conclude, each page only passes on part of the PageRank it receives. Hence, one of the latest hypotheses in PageRank Manipulation Theory is that you should reduce the number of steps through which you flow your PageRank. Cut out all those intermediate directories and such.

But it doesn’t matter if you keep all your pages at the root level directory or if you spread them throughout your site. Your PageRank is still going to step gently or roughly from page to page and the dampening factor (for all we know) will be applied to every page’s accrued PageRank. Screwing up your server’s file system is not going to change the flow of PageRank. (Note: How does that screw up a server’s file system? Ask your local Unix guru how well a server handles 1,000,000 documents in one directory. The look of horror on his face should clue you in.)

PageRank flow is tied to logical structure, not physical structure. Oh, sure, a few years ago people noticed that Toolbar PR would be automatically adjusted to “estimate” what PageRank might look like if it had been calculated for a page. If your root URL had a Toolbar PR of 5 then pages in the root directory might get a 4 — as would pages in a secondary directory. Pages 2 directories deep would get a Toolbar PR of 3, and so on.

Of course, once you started getting natural links for your deep content, the Toolbar PR values would go up or down because they were being based on real PageRank. On my own sites I have had many deep content pages that achieved as much Toolbar PR as the root URL — and that was happening back in the day when people thought you automatically got “stepped down” based on folder distance from the root directory.

What You Should Not Be Doing To Manage PageRank
You should not be using non-Google resources to track and measure your PageRank. They cannot tell you anything about what Google knows or allows to happen. Anyone who claims otherwise simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. That doesn’t mean you can’t use non-Google tools for link research. If you enjoy spending your days counting backlinks, there are plenty of tools out there to feed your obsession.

You should not be attempting to block the flow of PageRank on your sites. Since you cannot track and measure it, you don’t know how much blockage is effective and how much is self-destructive. Internal PageRank is such a tiny little value, why do you think you can build it up to something useful anyway?

You should not be attempting to hide pages from search indexes. For example, if you have a privacy policy on your Web site, you should allow search engines to show it in their indexes. Why? Because people search for privacy policies. If you put “noindex,noarchive” in your privacy policy’s robots meta tag, you’re only hurting your site’s search visibility. And some people might be tempted to say, “Hey, I can put ANYTHING on this page because it’s not indexed”. Yeah, well, that doesn’t guarantee that a search engine will respect your “follow” directive.

You should not be counting the number of internal links each page contains. Link counting means you’re doing it wrong. Link counting means you don’t understand search engine optimization. Link counting means you’re thinking in terms of not passing PageRank.

What You Should Do To Manage PageRank
Start by getting more value-passing links to your Web site. Saying that is so easy it sounds trite, but that is where you should begin if you seriously want to manage PageRank for your site.

Use an open navigational system. Instead of hiding things and pretending you’re being efficient, just embed more internal links on your site. That advice, of course, leads people to ask, “But what if I put too many links on my pages?” The answer is, put as many links on your pages as will help your visitors. No more than that. How many is that? It varies by Web site. Artificial link count limits are useless pieces of fluff advice.

An open navigational system doesn’t have to be embedded in a single element. You can use multiple navigation tools. Just make sure your visitors don’t have to rely on the BACK button to get around your site.

For More Information, Read These Articles

• Large Web Site Design Theory and Crawl Management
• Optimizing Web Site Structrue Through Architecture
• Architectural SEO – Website Navigation Principles
• Site Search Optimization
• Using Multiple Domains To Build PageRank
• Duplicate Content For SEO and SEO For Duplicate Content
• Search Engine Love: Now They Crawl Me, Now They Don’t
• Prioritizing Content For Search, People, and You
• Site Search Optimization 2.0
• How To Rehabilitate SEO Advice That Has Lost Focus
• Architecting Web Sites – Design From The SEO Perspective