In a WebmasterWorld thread, there is a question about how can one preserve the PageRank value they have on his pages and not spread it out to others too much.
Of course, you know my rant on PageRank, but outside of that. Look at the question again:
I have around 60 links to my other pages from my home page. Is that too much, will that cause my PR to leak? Also I need to ask you what about linking to other sites from home page, will that cause the PR to leak?
Seems like a valid SEO question but... Look how this guy is building his site. He did not ask, if we think if 60 links from his home page is too many links for his user. He did not ask if the 60 links will confuse his user. He wanted to know if it will affect his PageRank to his other pages.
Technically, yes - PageRank dilution works that way. But its bad practice to think this way. It is not a natural way of setting up a link structure.
Hence this comment from Googler, Adam Lasnik:
I wouldn't be particularly concerned about "PR leakage." It's more important to make sure that you aren't engaging in link schemes designed to manipulate your site's ranking.Many top-quality sites feature quite a few (quality) outgoing links, and are appreciated for that by visitors.
This site tends to do well in the Google results, we have a PageRank score of seven (I believe). Does it stop me from linking outwards to either my internal pages or to outside pages? No way. It is just natural for me to do so.
What Google is saying by "make sure that you aren't engaging in link schemes" is that by focusing on your PageRank dilution, is in affect a linking scheme focused "to manipulate your site's ranking."
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
