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Internal linking, structure & UX

PageRank sculpting

HistoricalAlso known as: link sculpting

PageRank sculpting is a historical SEO tactic. Site owners added rel="nofollow" to internal links to steer PageRank toward important pages. Since a change at Google around 2008 it no longer works as intended.

What was the idea?

The assumption was that a nofollowed link passes no PageRank, so the remaining links on the page receive more. Guides from that time advised marking pages such as legal notices or order status with nofollow to concentrate value on category and product pages.

PageRank simplified: how links pass on valueFive pages A to E with links. Page C receives links from A, B, D and E and has the highest value. A receives links from C and D and is almost as large. A splits its value across its two links to B and C. B links to E with rel=nofollow, and this link is not counted in the model. D and E receive no counted links and keep only the base value. Circle sizes are calculated with the 1998 formula by Brin and Page and are for illustration only.nofollowA1.85B0.93C1.92D0.15E0.15Circle size = value in the model(illustrative, calculated forthis example)Link: a page’s value is splitacross its outgoing links.rel=nofollow: not counted inthe model. Google has treatednofollow as a hint for rankingsince September 2019, and forcrawling and indexing sinceMarch 1, 2020.Model after Brin/Page 1998, d = 0.85:PR(A) = (1 − d) + d · (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))Google still uses PageRank in an evolved form. Its current weighting is not public.
Simplified PageRank model: a page passes on its value in equal parts through its outgoing links, and many or strong incoming links lead to a high value. Circle sizes are illustrative, calculated with the 1998 formula. Google uses PageRank in an evolved form; its current weighting is not public. Sources: Brin, Page (1998): The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine; Page, Brin, Motwani, Winograd (1999): The PageRank Citation Ranking; Google Search Central: A guide to Google Search ranking systems; Google Search Central: Qualify your outbound links to Google; Google Search Central Blog: Evolving “nofollow” (Sep 10, 2019).

What applies today?

Matt Cutts wrote on June 15, 2009, that Google had changed how PageRank flows. A page with five followed links and some nofollowed links no longer gives the followed links a larger share. The nofollowed links still use up their part, and it is lost. He advised against sculpting and pointed to site architecture and good content.

Since September 2019, Google treats nofollow as a hint, not a directive. The attributes rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc" were added alongside it.

How Google weighs nofollowed links in the distribution of PageRank today is not publicly documented. Google’s help page on rel attributes only says that such links will generally not be followed.

Example

HTML
<!-- formerly: nofollow on the imprint to leave more PageRank for the category link -->
<a href="/imprint/" rel="nofollow">Imprint</a>

Today this markup does not shift value to other links.

Sources

  1. PageRank sculpting – Matt Cutts, 15 June 2009mattcutts.com
  2. Evolving nofollow – new ways to identify the nature of links – Google Search Central Blog, September 2019developers.google.com
  3. Outbound-Links qualifizieren (nofollow, sponsored, ugc) – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com

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