A common theory amongst SEO's in discussions today is so-called PR Leakage. This theory claims that the more outbound links that you have on a page, the more Google PageRank is leaked away as a result.
Even though this concept cannot be found in any of the papers that have been published by the Google founders, it is still gaining wide acceptance amongst experts in the field.
PageRank leakage aside, how does outbound linking affect SERPS at Google? According to a study conducted by John Ricerca, it improves your rankings. The results published were very conclusive; they showed a direct correlation between higher totals of outbound page links resulted in higher SERP rankings for those same pages.
Ricerca says, "The SEOs touting the PR Leakage theory are simply wrong."
While the study shows a direct correlation between higher totals of outbound links and better SERPS, it still does not disprove the theory of PR leakage. On the other hand, it does show that there's no direct correlation between PR and SERPS.
Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of search on a daily basis. While PageRank continues to provide the basis for web search, it stands to reason that they would also be improving upon PageRank also. What was published eons ago can no longer be used in evaluating the web today.
Pages of higher PR mean nothing if they don't match the user's query. Google's sophisticated algorithm does more than comparing the PR of the page. They also examine many aspects of the page's content besides the pages that are linking to it; they are examining the pages that are linked out from that page as well. Ricerca's study substantiates this fact.
Therefore by analyzing a page's inbound and outbound links, Google can determine what a page is about. A page with outbound links will provide Google with more information about that page. This information is taken directly from the off-page content that you are linking to.
Hiding links in an effort to stop PR leakage can actually work against you; it will eliminate a very important piece of the puzzle. Providing outbound links that are relative to the content will actually help in the analysis process -- it can also provide you with higher relative search result rankings.
The question of PR leakage becomes a moot discussion and should not be stressed over. It is not a question of whether it exists or not, it is a simple matter of it having no effect on search results at Google.
Discuss this post in Does PR Leakage Affect SERP Rankings?
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