PageRank Drain

What is PageRank Drain?

PageRank Drain – roughly “PageRank outflow” – is a term from the evaluation of the quality of a website, which Google carries out on the basis of the link structure of the page. The PageRank of a website is influenced by each backlink. The more links there are on the linking page, the more the value of the PageRank decreases. The weighting is distributed to many external pages, a drain takes place.

How is the PageRank Drain determined?

The PageRank assesses the importance of a web page in terms of how many other sources link to the page. The assumption is that important pages with high-quality content are linked to more often. However, if a page contains a large number of Outbound Links, the value of the links is reduced. Instead of a high PageRank with one high-quality link, the algorithm records ten less high-quality links and thus a drain.

Example:

Two blogs about travel link to a website with content about air travel. The first blog links only to the mentioned website. The second blog simultaneously set Outbound Links to six other, topic-related sites. The mentioned website alone does not seem to provide enough information. In the first case, weighty PageRank is inherited; in the second case, there is a drain.

How important is the PageRank Drain for search engine optimization?

In recent years, PageRank and its drain have become much less important. Also, all the tools from Google to view the PK of a website have been removed. However, it can be assumed that Google still uses the determined values for the ranking of search results to a certain extent.

The reasons for minimizing the algorithm include:

No priority on the actual content quality of the linked pages
Focus on website operators instead of users
Possibility of manipulation through link purchases & Co

FAQ

How to view the PR drain of your site?

Information about PageRank and Drain officially became a thing of the past in spring 2016. Even before that, the tools for viewing had not been updated for some time. Alternatively, backlinks to your own page can be found and analyzed online through various tools.

Do backlinks from sites with high outflow have a negative impact on your own website?

Today, PageRank makes up only a small part of the factors in ranking Google. High quality content, targeted keyword placement and organically generated backlinks more than make up for any negative impact.

Do you have any more questions?

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