The star configuration

The Spreadsheet - the star configuration

Simple setup with 5 pages
The star configuration
Small sites often have every page linking to each other - like the picture to the left.

Simple setup: 5 pages link to each other
How to specify the star configuration
The set-up is done on the spreadsheet like this:

Results of the start configuration
First iteration
Here is the spreadsheet. As the picture to the left shows, all pages get PageRank 1 after the first iteration - bo-o-oring!

Inbound PageRank
How to specify inbound PageRank
Let's try simulating an external page that links to us with a PageRank of 10 (picture to the right).

The result can be seen on this spreadsheet - and now something is happening - the site's total PageRank keeps growing for each iteration: 13.5, 20.725, 26.86625 and so on. So we're increasing our PageRank - and this is why some people prefer the star-structure.

The total PageRank will not increase interminably. The result of the increase will be Inbound PageRank * d/(1-d)

Try removing a few of the links in the spreadsheet. As long as there's at least one link going to and from each page, the total PageRank of the site will remain the same. The star structure does not "generate" more PageRank than any other model.

The star structure is not a very practical model. Normally you would like to have less PageRank on your "copyright" pages, "About Us" pages and so on.