PageRank sculpting

PageRank sculpting involves use of the 'rel="nofollow"' link attribute to pass a page's Google PageRank on to only selected webpages.

PageRank sculpting works on the principle that each webpage passes on a percentage of it's own PageRank, on to pages which it links to - the percentage passed on is reduced by the number of links on the page. Hence, by controlling the number of links on a page that a search engine robot will follow, the website's owner can send PageRank towards pages which they wish to promote.

PageRank sculpting has been dismissed by Matt Cutts at Google, saying that while nofollow prevents PageRank being passed, this does not contribute to link juice passed elsewhere.

Last updated on 13 July 2010, at 08:58.