Leaking Page Rank

If I have several apples, and I give you some, I have less apples than before.

If I have a Page Rank of several, and I give you some links, I may well still have the same Page Rank I had before.

Assuming, that is, that you are a good and worthy site, both appropriate and thematically related to mine, in the eyes of the great god Google.

In fact, if Google thinks you're a better site on the subject than I am, then because I gave you some of my apples/Page Rank, I may now myself have more than the several apples/Page Rank that I had before.

But if Google thinks you're giving your apples/Page Rank to a "bad neighbourhood" site (spam, etc) or a site entirely unrelated to yours (think "blatantly obvious reciprocal linking schemes" here) then you may well end up with less apples/Page Rank or maybe even no apples/Page Rank at all.

So you should maybe be a bit careful who you link to.

I don't think this is something you should stress about too much though.

If you mention in your Blog that you bumped into your buddy Vinnie on Tuesday and Vinnie's Bar & Grill does the best kebabs in town (and it does, there's no question), then there's absolutely no harm in putting up a link to Vinnie's Grill's web site. It's natural. Similarly, if you mention that you were talking to Big Frank about the Match when you were in his Shoe Repair Emporium on the Saturday, then again it's natural to link to the big man's site. Both Vinnie and Frank have a link back to your business site; after all, you're a regular customer and it's common courtesy to do this.

This is absolutely not the same, though, as having row after row of links to sites that have absolutely no relation to you or your neighbourhood or anything whatsoever to do with you. That's absurd, it's obviously artificial and it's asking for trouble; if Google gets a whiff of a reciprocal link scheme implemented for its own sake, your Page Rank will leak like a rusty sieve and your rankings will plummet as a consequence.

And you won't, as they say, like them apples.

I have to say, given recent developments in the Googleverse (BigDaddy, Jagger) that if you do want to link to Vinnie's Bar & Grill, you do so strictly from your own personal blog, and not from your business site about (the wholly unrelated subject of) whatever. From there, your links have to be strictly business-oriented, save the good-neighbourly stuff for your blog, otherwise you probably won't be able to afford to live in a neighbourhood that actually has, er, neighbours in it.

So a sensible linking strategy is something you should always be keeping in mind. But in the implementation of that strategy, don't let your better instincts be over-ruled by fear of leaking page rank.

Always remember this; "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared" - Siddhartha Gautama, 563 - 483 BC.

Don't be afraid to share your candle.