PageRank & Dynamic Links: Myth or Reality

[Cecil]

I'm creating this as a new thread because the issue came up again in conversation and I'd like to get a consensus again (and confirm my opinions match everyone elses!)

Many people have felt that dynamic links do not pass on PR. Some believe that they won't even allow the target page to be indexed. Personally, I'm quite sure they allow pages to be indexed because I have had some of my own pages get indexed WITH DIFFERENT PR RATINGS depending on whether you include the dynamic variable or not. This was because I happened to have links to it that include and don't include the dynamic variable. So I know the pages will get indexed and they will eventually receive pagerank.

However, some folks believe that a dynamic link with even just one variable wouldn't pass on PR. I can't see how my page with the variable tag would have received PR from google if it didn't pass the pagerank.

Of course, one needs to make sure they are going to make all their links cover the page either with or without the variable so that it will get maximal effects. But this little experiment proved educational for me.

Does anyone else have more experience on this or see anything different? I would imagine that google gives up if you have too many variables since I've heard that too, but haven't tried it.

[2savvy]

Depends on the session exclusion code I am not sure about passing PR but it does make a website more search engine friendly.

I would like to know about actually passing on the PR to.

[VRI]

Personally I've seen no issue with the spidering or passing PR with a variable or two.

I've been evaluating directories for another project and it is consistent that long URL strings tie up the indexing and the passing of PR.

[driver]

It's a reality. G doesn't like anything that smells like a session ID, so in the past, it would not crawl anything with an id in the GET vars (vars passed via the URL).

I know that they are crawling more URLs with GET vars, but you have to be careful what you name your vars, how many you pass, etc... I've seen plenty of URLs with GET vars that have PR. It's not a problem like it once was, but I'm pretty sure it's still a problem in some cases.

Seriously, why bother? A competent webmaster should be able to write your URLs to straight .html paths, and then you'll have no worries. A little effort goes a long way.

Also, when it comes to swapping links, many webmaster are wary of receiving links from URLs with GET vars.

[webmaster]

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...eo%2Dguy%2Ecom as you can see dynamic URL's get spidered (And rank) fine

HOWEVER

Each of these is one click away from a PR 7 page

http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=42

http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7

http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=24

So you see that PR has a really hard time passing variables, it will pass but takes way longer and is way less efficient. If I cared about PR on that site I would rewrite the URl's so that they work as they do here, but I just dont lol, when I redesign it I certainly will though

[alejet]

I've had PR pass just fine on sites with one or two variables, with the traditional 1pt drop in PR. The key is as people say, don't use andything that smells of id=, sessid=, phpsess etc.

Rewrite if you can, and do it from the start 'cause later it's a PITA!

- ale

[patti]

One of our test sites had 113 links using "mysite.com" -site:www.mysite.com
It now shows as 44
Having just checked each one, the missing ones have a? or = or similar in the URL to the link page
Coincidence?
Another test site...
183 confirmed links, including some excellent PR pages, but only 54 showing using "mysite.com", and only 11 showing in toolbar.
More than coincidence?