Back Links

[will 68]

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Can someone tell me why on some sites google lists internal links on a site as back links and on others it shows only back links from other sites.

The reason I ask is a recent site i done, google listed it in december it also listed the few back links i had sent up from other sites but also listed 95 back links from internel links from within the site. But last week it then dropped the back links it had listed from the internal links from within this site. Since it done this the traffic has dropped by 75%.

I have a few sites and have never figured out what makes google list internal links on some sites as back links yet on other sites it does not do this.

Can someone please tell me how it does this, is there a certain way you must create links on your site for google to pick them up as back links.

I have always been aware google shows internal links as back links but never thought it made any difference to a site until last week when it dropped the internal links on this site i mentioned, along with it 1PR point went from 5 to 4 and along with that 75% of the traffic.

Thanks Will

[matbennett]

I am sure that someone will correct me if I am wrong (I don't keep as up on these things as I used to), but I think that google only show PR4 or higher links as back links.

This means that if your PR dropped from 5 to 4, the other links are likely to be at least one lower still and therefore not shown.

In short, sounds like the lack of internal links showing is a symptom of dropped PR and not the cause of it.

[Ross]

I agree. Google only show PR4 and above backlinks. If your main page has gone from PR5 to PR4 then it's likely that lots of your interanal pages will have dropped from PR4 to PR3. It's not the end of the world, the PR3 and lower backlinks are still counted but they're just not displayed.

Don't think it would explain a loss of traffic, that's more likely that your site has slipped in the listings. Might also be worth checking that you haven't lost an outside link which would cause your main page PR to drop.

Ross

[pericom]

I think its cos when you create a new site it gets artificial PR and this is what you see in month 1.

Then later on in months 2-3 you see the real PR and the backlinks with be reduced in PR value - which is probably what happened to you.

[will 68]

Thanks for the response, after browsing around I would agree you appear to need a PR of 4+ on internal pages for them to show as back links on your site.

I had just never looked into this before and wondered why google done this.

Thanks again, Will.