Dangling Pages

[watto]

So I think I have my head around dangling pages, but I still have one question.

Currently at my site I have pages which I have blocked in robots.txt and also used meta noindex, nofollow tag. These pages have accumulated pr. I have changed the meta tag to 'noindex' and remove the nofollow. These pages are not 'dead end' pages and do have links pointing out.

My question is will the green line disappear from these pages as the pr is now passed on?

watto

[chriscash01]

yes., yes., and yes

[watto]

Thanks for your brief answer.

watto

[williamc]

So I think I have my head around dangling pages, but I still have one question.

Currently at my site I have pages which I have blocked in robots.txt and also used meta noindex, nofollow tag. These pages have accumulated pr. I have changed the meta tag to 'noindex' and remove the nofollow. These pages are not 'dead end' pages and do have links pointing out.

My question is will the green line disappear from these pages as the pr is now passed on?

watto

chriscash: please research before posting things as fact.

From another discussion it has basically been determined that noindex pages can still accumulate PR.

Also PageRank is not 'passed on' in the way you apparently are thinking.

A page may pass on a fractional amount of its own PR, yes, but it does not LOSE any of its own PR due to that.

[watto]

williamc,

I don't quite follow. Why would I want a 'NoIndex' page to keep its pr? I also think you are incorrect in reference to how the pr is transferd. Visit SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make.

Getting back to my original question, now that I have 'followed' the links on my 'NoIndex' pages, will the pr disappear from these pages?

[Andy Beard]

noindex which is the same as noindex,follow allows you to pass PR to where you link to on the page.

If you nofollow the page, it becomes a hanging or dangling page.

As such a number of things could happen

1. Most certainly, the juice will flow randomly to all the pages on the internet, whereever the wanderer jumps to. That is pure PageRank formula

2. It is possible that Google pass less juice to hanging pages

3. Hanging pages may not be part of iterative PageRank calculations

It is however vital that you control the links on noindex pages, both from the content areas and sidebars. External links are leaks on noindexed pages too.

[williamc]

williamc,

I don't quite follow. Why would I want a 'NoIndex' page to keep its pr? I also think you are incorrect in reference to how the pr is transferd. Visit SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make.

Hi Andy, nice to see you here.

Watto: I was not saying you would "want" it to keep its PR, simply that it will, if it has any links passing pr to it from any source.

Also, Andy's article bit about dangling pages references an article on webworkshop, written by Phil Craven, a friend of mine, which was actually dubbed "the home of pagerank" by Dan Thies, and which I moderate at. After thoroughly discussing PR with Phil years ago, testing of my own ever since, and keeping current with it, I think I have a pretty solid grasp of how PR flows thanks

[kevsta]

chriscash: please research before posting things as fact.

From another discussion it has basically been determined that noindex pages can still accumulate PR.

Also PageRank is not 'passed on' in the way you apparently are thinking.

A page may pass on a fractional amount of its own PR, yes, but it does not LOSE any of its own PR due to that.

however, as far as I am aware chriscash is correct in that the greenbar will now disappear.

..not that it means anything anyway with regards to real PR flow.

[watto]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Nice tips Andy. Much appreciated.

Williamc, I was not doubting your knowledge of pr sculpting or pr in general, but I believe that you were incorrect when you said that "a page may pass on a fractional amount of its own PR, yes, but it does not LOSE any of its own PR due to that".

Seeing as though we are discussing a page with a 'noindex' meta tag, are you saying that this page will not pass on its pr and infact keep it? if this were true, than why are we so concerned about dangling pages?

Kevsta, this is the answer I was looking for. Thanks.

watto

[crankydave]

Hey Andy... well said.

watto... A noindex page will accumulate and pass (vote) PR in the same way that an indexed page will. The green line will disappear from a noindex page but as long as there are links pointing to that page it will still accumulate and pass (vote) PR on to the pages it links to. You just can't see it in the toolbar.

If the toolbar shows a PR4 for a page and then you noindex it, that page will still be a PR4 and still pass the available PR to the pages it links to whether or not you can see the green pixels.

Dave