Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Search Spam, answered a question about links in his latest Webmaster Help video where a user writes in to ask:
What impact would two links on a page pointing to the same target, each using different anchor text, have on the flow of PageRank?
Matt begins his answer by explaining that this kind of situation is like “dancing on the head of a pin.” In the grand scheme of SEO, there are far more important things for people to worry about than this.
However, some people may genuinely just be curious. I’ll admit I’ve even been curious about this before, because sometimes I link to the same page twice in one article and I’ve wondered what the implications are when doing that.
If, like me, you’re curious to know the answer to this question, and aren’t worried about it as part of your SEO strategy, Matt explains it like this.
PageRank Works The Same
When a page is linked to twice from another page, it works like all outbound links when it comes to PageRank.
When one page has multiple outbound links, then the amount of PageRank being passed gets divided evenly among those links.
If two links go to the same page, then twice as much PageRank goes to that page.
Google Only Reads Anchor Text From One Link
If the two links each have different anchor text, Matt explains that they are subject to Google’s link extraction process.
Google’s link extraction process works by identifying all the links on a page and extracting them, and then assigning the anchor text of those links to the documents they point to.
Matt explains that the link extraction process may select all the links or just a few of them, and that behavior changes over time. The last time Matt checked, which he says was in 2009, if the same page was linked to twice then only one of those links would be extracted.
There Are More Important Things Than This
Matt reiterates that there are higher priorities to worry about than this, such as making sure your homepage is drawing in users and you’re keeping those users engaged with good content.
But if you were curious about this, as I was, then now your curiosity is satisfied.
To hear Matt’s full answer in his own words, see the video below:
