Link Equity

Link equity is the ranking value that passes from one page to another through a hyperlink. Search engines treat a link as a vote, and the strength of that vote depends on the linking page’s own authority, its relevance, and how many other links it hands out. Link equity is the informal name for what Google’s algorithm handles as PageRank.

Link Equity vs Link Juice

“Link juice” is the same thing under an older name. The term came from SEO forums in the early 2000s, when practitioners needed a shorthand for the ranking value flowing through links. “Link equity” replaced it in professional usage because it describes an asset rather than a fluid.

Neither term appears in Google documentation, which refers to PageRank and ranking signals. Treat them as interchangeable when reading older SEO material.

Link Equity vs PageRank

PageRank is the specific algorithm. Link equity is the loose concept built on top of it.

PageRank was published by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in their 1998 paper on the Google prototype and patented in 2001. It scores a page by the number and strength of links pointing at it, calculated iteratively across the whole web graph with a damping factor of 0.85, which models the chance a random surfer keeps clicking rather than stopping.

Two practical points follow:

• The public score is gone, the internal one is not. Google stopped updating Toolbar PageRank in 2013 and removed it entirely in March 2016. Gary Illyes confirmed in 2017 that Google still uses PageRank internally.
• Modern link scoring is not the 1998 formula. Google’s Reasonable Surfer patent weights links by how likely a user is to click them, so a link in body copy counts for more than the same link repeated in a footer.

How Link Equity Flows

A page passes a share of its own value to every page it links to. That share is split, not copied.

1. A page accumulates value from the links pointing at it, both external and internal.
2. It passes a portion of that value onward, divided across its outbound links.
3. The receiving page adds the incoming value to its own total and repeats the process.
4. Flow continues through the site, weakening at each step.

The split matters. A page linking to 10 destinations passes roughly a tenth of its distributable value to each. The same page linking to 100 passes a hundredth. This is why dilution constrains navigation and footer design, and why orphan pages receive nothing at all.

What Determines How Much Equity a Link Passes

• Authority of the linking page: value comes from the page, not the domain in the abstract. A link from a strong page on a weak site can outperform the reverse.
• Topical relevance: links from related content carry more weight than unrelated ones.
• Number of outbound links: more links on the page means a smaller share each.
• Link position: main-content links outweigh boilerplate links in headers, footers, and sidebars.
• Anchor text: descriptive anchors tell search engines what the destination is about.
• rel attribute: nofollow, sponsored, and ugc links are treated as hints rather than endorsements and generally pass nothing.
• Destination status code: a 200 or a 301 receives the equity. A 404 or a soft 404 discards it.

Does a 301 Redirect Pass Link Equity

Yes. Gary Illyes confirmed in 2016 that 30x redirects no longer lose PageRank, which ended the older guidance about a 15% loss per hop. A 301 redirect sends effectively all of the original page’s ranking value to its destination.

Three conditions still apply:

• The target must be relevant. Redirecting a retired article to the homepage is treated as a soft 404, and a soft 404 passes nothing. Point it at the closest matching page instead.
• Chains erode the benefit. Each extra hop slows consolidation, and mixed permanent and temporary chains behave unpredictably. Point the first URL at the final destination.
• The redirect must stay live. Removing it after a migration cuts off every link still pointing at the old URL.

Branded short links behave the same way when they resolve with a 301, which is why short links do not cost you PageRank as long as they avoid extra hops.

How to Measure Link Equity

There is no public score, so every measurement is a third-party proxy trained to correlate with rankings:

• Ahrefs: URL Rating (UR) for a page, Domain Rating (DR) for a site, both on a 0 to 100 logarithmic scale.
• Moz: Page Authority and Domain Authority, same 0 to 100 range.
• Majestic: Trust Flow and Citation Flow, which separate link quality from link quantity.

Google Search Console reports which pages link to you and which of your pages receive the most links, without attaching a score. It is the only first-party source, so use it to confirm what the third-party crawlers report.

Common Misconceptions

• Nofollow redirects equity elsewhere. It does not. Matt Cutts announced in 2009 that the share assigned to a nofollowed link is discarded, not redistributed to the remaining links. PageRank sculpting has not worked since.
• Equity is a finite tank that drains. A page’s outbound links do not reduce the value it already holds. The split affects what each recipient gets, not what the source keeps.
• Only external links count. Internal links pass equity too, and they are the part you fully control.
• More links always beat fewer. One relevant link from a strong page routinely outweighs dozens of weak or unrelated ones.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is link equity?

Link equity is the ranking value transferred from one page to another through a link. Search engines interpret each link as a signal of endorsement, weighted by the linking page’s own authority and relevance. The value is divided across all the links on that page, so a page with fewer outbound links passes more to each. It applies to internal links as well as external ones.

What does link juice mean?

Link juice means the same as link equity. It is the older, informal SEO term for the ranking value a link passes, and it dates to early-2000s forum usage. Neither term is used by Google, which refers to PageRank and ranking signals instead. Treat the two as synonyms when reading older SEO articles.

Does a 301 redirect pass link equity?

Yes, a 301 passes effectively all of it. Gary Illyes confirmed in 2016 that 30x redirects no longer lose PageRank, replacing earlier guidance that assumed a loss at each hop. The exceptions are redirects to irrelevant pages, which Google may treat as soft 404s and drop entirely, and long redirect chains that delay consolidation.

Do nofollow links pass link equity?

Generally no. Since Google reclassified nofollow as a hint in September 2019, the attribute no longer guarantees the link is ignored, but it still signals that no endorsement is intended. The related sponsored and ugc values, introduced at the same time, work the same way. Nofollow links still deliver referral traffic and brand exposure, so they retain value outside rankings.

Point your branded short links at a single destination with no extra hops, and the link equity reaches the page you actually want ranking.