EGOL started a thread at Cre8asite Forums asking how using the various robots.txt command or META noindex nofollow commands will impact the flow of PageRank and link popularity.

Several members go through some detailed examples and what-if scenarios. However, Ammon sums it up nicely.

Ammon explains that a page that is that is not in the Google index but the links are picked up to that page, won't count. Why? Well, the original PageRank document has a concept called "dangling links," which reads:

Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet.

Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly.

This may be a classic example of what a "dangling link" is. And if this original paragraph in the PageRank paper is still valid, then there is your answer. But is it still valid?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

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