How much PageRank does a page that is not in the index have?
If a page has a NOINDEX tag on it, how much PageRank does it have? The intuitive answer would be “None”. How can a page that is not indexed have PageRank? Wouldn’t it be treated like a dangling link and disregarded during PageRank calculations?
Apparently not. Matt Cutts states on seomoz:
Does a link from a page with meta robots=”noindex, follow” carry less weight? no weight?
For Google, I believe such links would carry the same weight as normal links on regular pages.
Hmmm. Does he mean that the unindexed page actually has a PageRank? Or does he mean that the zero Pagerank that the unindexed page has would be divided out among the links on the page, giving nothing to each? I wonder …
One thing’s for sure … if “NOINDEX, FOLLOW” works as implied, it’s a great way to inject spammy content and links.