Sphinn - SEO Question: does a non-indexed page pass on PageRank?

59
Sphinn It!

SEO Question: does a non-indexed page pass on PageRank?

Went Hot: November 26, 2008 - 9:08 am
Posted By: jdevalk 220 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://eduardblacquiere.com)
Category: Google SEO

"Google calculates PageRank on the total network of sites Google has in its index. From that point of view a non-indexed page can’t accumulate PageRank, because Google can’t determine the relative value the page. Or can it?"

6 Comments

Who Desphunn This (1)

Comments

from MajesticSEO 220 days ago #

Votes: 2 | Vote:

+ -

Google has multiple indices - the one we all see is full-text final index, not every URL gets there, however they do have complete web-graph (also index) of the web used in PageRank calculations and other things. Any URL they find gets into web-graph and if has enough PR or it's new domain (or whatever other rules are in place) it will be crawled, if successful and some outgoing links on that page are found then it MAY well pass PR without even being included into final full-text index.

Chances are that the pages that don't pass any PR are those that are penalised or had nofollow META tag in them or some other reasons.

from eduardblacquiere 219 days ago # - show/hide this comment

Votes: -1 | Vote:

+ -

You're right, thanks for your comment!
There's a definition problem with "non-indexed". Using Robots.txt or Meta robots to exclude pages from a search engine index DOESN'T keep Google from crawling the page and taking it into account with the PageRank calculation.

from ianmacfarlane 219 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Robots.txt is a different situation from meta robots - if the page is excluded via robots.txt, then this prevents search engines from crawling it in the first place. Search engines cannot give any values to links they have never seen.

from Sebastian 219 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Ian, an URI never crawled by Google due to a robots.txt block can accumulate pageRank, and can get indexed.

from eduardblacquiere 219 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

@IanI agree with Sebastian :)

from MajesticSEO 219 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

I think Ian probably meant here that if page can't be crawled then those outgoing links on it can't be seen by search engines and thus the page can't pass out PageRank or similiar algorithms.