Does PR really matter?

Does getting a higher PR really matter?

I've found that if I search for a keyword, that a mix of PRs come up. The highest PR doesn't show up first with the lowest PR website at the bottom.

What does PR, in terms of actual ranking, help?

Does PR just give some indication how often you are visited by Google's bots?

PR is one of the most important factors in ranking search results. If all pages you're searching for are well-optimized for a particular keywords, search results will be ranked by PR. What you see is that 1) some pages with higher PR aren't optimized, and 2) those higher PR pages are less relevant to the keyword you're searching for.

From what I understand PR is just a part of the equation. If you have really low pr, and you are going after a competetive key word, chances are you will not show up in the results for google. People seem to be striving for a high pr - and some even pay for pr.

It all depends on the website. If your website is about red kazawanas, you could get a top position with little or no PR. If it is about selling Viagra... you need to get it up -still speaking about the PR, of course -

So, PR is a big issue; the more, the better.

You cannot ignore or diminish any one part of the components that are within the Google algo. Google can give more or less weight to any component within. PR used to be much more important. Will it be again?

You also have to think of the spidering activity high PR brings too, and not just the PR/SERP factor.

Some sites thrive on having content indexed as soon as it's put online before competitors.
Sites from news, sites selling newly released products down to movie cinema reviews on opening night
and everything in between. High PR helps get it indexed fast being the first kid on the block.

Plus alot of non profit sites do sell PR, which helps pay server costs. One PR point may mean the
difference between dipping in to your own pocket for bandwidth costs or having the site sustaining itself.

Also a few PR points can mean the difference between obtaining links from other sites and them not
wanting to know you.

High PR generally means high PR subpages, this has an effect on your own pages counting as backlinks to
yourself instead of relying soly on offsite "recip" links which is also a bonus especially on numerous page sites.

So... besides PR just meaning a #1 or #2 position, it holds alot of other importance as you can see.

Particularly important imho as link exchanges bring more surfers and more spider activity.... so any changes you make will be picked up faster.

PR is just a little key to the whole SEO product
People are forgeting about content, links anchot text they all play a big part in OPT.

I'm also seeing a link between PR and the amount of pages that Google will index for a site.

Thank you all for answering my question. It makes sense.

I'm assuming that Google has always had PR implemented and they just recently decided to share it with the public. Am I correct to assume this?

Also, if you were to get a link from another site with a higher PR, I'm guessing that it would matter if it was coming from a site with the same theme?

I'm wondering because I'm going to be starting my linking campaign and wondering if I should just go for all the high PR general sites, or more similiar themed sites with not as high PR.

Right now, the assumption that most have is, NO, it doesn't matter if it is from the same theme, AT THIS MOMENT.

BUT, most assume that this could easily change in the future, so it is always best to go after themed links, if and when possible.

I'm curious how the initial PR is calculated. When I built my site I began with PR5. How's that? Was it calculated based on content? Keyword density? Maybe someone should shoot me a link explaining how PR is determined. (Or is that manual in the sandbox )

No one really knows how PR is calculated. The most common theory is that is uses backlinks (counted as "votes") to calculate a big part of it.

fryman

I'm sorry, but I just LOVE YOUR AVATAR. It really, truly makes my day.

While they may well have built on it we do have a pretty good idea what the calculation is like:

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1999-66

Regards, S