How PageRank distributes across links
PageRank is a vote: a page with 10 referring links has more authority than a page with 1. But the value of that vote depends on the authority of the voters. A link from the New York Times homepage carries more weight than a link from a private forum. Google models this recursively, treating each link as a fractional vote weighted by the referring page's own PageRank.
The damping factor (typically 0.85-0.90) models user behavior: when a user clicks a link, they have a small chance of leaving the web entirely or typing a new URL. This factor prevents infinite authority concentration and reflects that web users don't follow pure chain logic.
Link distribution and crawl efficiency
A page with 100 outgoing links dilutes the PageRank it passes to each link compared to a page with 10 outgoing links. That's not a penalty; it's a consequence of the math. A homepage that links to 300 products dilutes authority to each product. Adding a navigational hub that selectively links only to top-performing product categories concentrates authority where you need it.
Internal link topology shapes how authority flows. Deep site architecture (product buried 5 layers deep) receives diluted authority unless you strengthen the chain with strategic cross-links. This is why hub-and-spoke topical structures outperform single-level catalogs.