4 ms·

> Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Yes, it is, and it still makes up the super majority of factors. It's

> Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Yes, it is, and it still makes up the super majority of factors. It's the reason why people buy expired domains (that have links pointing to them), it's the reason why they pay lots of money to rent a subdomain or folder on cnn.com. It's the links, and it's only the links. And it works great. The actual content on the site has little to do with the ranking. Yeah, sure, you need to have the keywords in there, but you don't need quality content, you just need quality links.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
So you're saying that the page rank for http://foo.bar.com/baz.html http://foo.bar.com/baz.html is more a function of the link score for foorbar.com than the link score for baz.html or its contents?
- luckylion 5y ago
  No, but you do have internal links on your site as well, and they work just like external links, passing on "link juice". If you have a million important links pointing to / and zero external links pointing to /baz.html and you link from / to /baz.html, you'll still see /baz.html hike up the SERPs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27991322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27991322 this submission from today is exactly the same. Expired domains are the big business these days, and they can absolutely catapult you into the top 3 without any change in content, performance or layout.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    This seems quite contrary to Brin & Page's original explanation of their (first) page rank algorithms, which was boosted as utilizing other people's linkage as the justification for a higher ranking. It also seems ripe (ruined, even!) for being completely weaponized. Another failure of the imagination, maybe.
    - luckylion 5y ago
      It makes sense though, I believe. If you link to the home page of a website, what would that mean if you consider it a vote: "I endorse this precise document", or "I endorse what's on that website"? It would make sense to lessen the endorsement if you link to individual pages only, but not the home page / hub pages. SEOs have, of course, gone to extreme lengths with that by doing "pagerank sculpting", i.e. making sure you mostly link to the pages you want to rank well with, and not your privacy policy. From my experience, they've stopped being overly sensitive about that now ("it has to look natural"), and it's just about raw power: who can buy the best expired domain (state entities being dumb and just letting their domains expired when they rename...), or who can rent a folder (and the links that come with it) on the strongest media platform. It's a cat-and-mouse game, and google seems to not want to be a cat unless they can be a perfectly automated cat, and they can't.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

So you're saying that the page rank for http://foo.bar.com/baz.html http://foo.bar.com/baz.html is more a function of the link score for foorbar.com than the link score for baz.html or its contents?

luckylion 5y ago
No, but you do have internal links on your site as well, and they work just like external links, passing on "link juice". If you have a million important links pointing to / and zero external links pointing to /baz.html and you link from / to /baz.html, you'll still see /baz.html hike up the SERPs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27991322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27991322 this submission from today is exactly the same. Expired domains are the big business these days, and they can absolutely catapult you into the top 3 without any change in content, performance or layout.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  This seems quite contrary to Brin & Page's original explanation of their (first) page rank algorithms, which was boosted as utilizing other people's linkage as the justification for a higher ranking. It also seems ripe (ruined, even!) for being completely weaponized. Another failure of the imagination, maybe.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    It makes sense though, I believe. If you link to the home page of a website, what would that mean if you consider it a vote: "I endorse this precise document", or "I endorse what's on that website"? It would make sense to lessen the endorsement if you link to individual pages only, but not the home page / hub pages. SEOs have, of course, gone to extreme lengths with that by doing "pagerank sculpting", i.e. making sure you mostly link to the pages you want to rank well with, and not your privacy policy. From my experience, they've stopped being overly sensitive about that now ("it has to look natural"), and it's just about raw power: who can buy the best expired domain (state entities being dumb and just letting their domains expired when they rename...), or who can rent a folder (and the links that come with it) on the strongest media platform. It's a cat-and-mouse game, and google seems to not want to be a cat unless they can be a perfectly automated cat, and they can't.