pagerank importance?

How important is pagerank really theses days?
Not the percived value from webmasters out there who dont know better, but really what value does it hold now? Do you think it is lossing value as time goes by? Google seems to be changing its worth in rankings?

Hi, frankybme.

I belive that PR is still very important, not one in terms of ranking but also on how much attention google gives your web site. If you have a web site 10000 pages and PR2, then it is very possible that google will never all of your web site.

I'd have to agree that it is quite important. Clearly its not the only major factor, but is quite necessary especially in competing in highly competitive keyword areas. Do a search on a highly competitive phrase, and check the PRs for the top 10 sites. I guarantee you they are all fairly high.

Of course this does not mean that the #1 will have equal or higher PR than the #5 and the #6 vs. the #10. Not at all. BUT, in a highly competive area it does mean they'll all be high, and probably all at least PR5 or 6. You are unlikely to see many PR3 or 4 sites in competive SERPs (page 1 or so).

Also, as mentioned - high PR also helps the frequently of having your site crawled - definitely another plus.

PR has been and will always be very important in search engine rankings. The challenge for Google is to weed out link spam from true links.

Last summer the importance of pagerank was enormous... but I believe that this importance has declined. I used to be able to beat anyone who had a lower pagerank but now I am seeing a few sites get above me that are one or even two pagerank units lower.

I believe that link diversity is starting to be saluted..... for example if you have 100 total links from 50 different sites... that might be valued a lot more than 500 total links from 10 different sites (even with greater pagerank value).

Also, I used to have a few hotdog stand sites (tiny sites of five or six pages that were supported by heavy PR). These used to beat the big content rich sites - but now these hotdog stands have seen their important keywords filtered. The hotdog stands had high rankings but they really didn't deserve to be above the large sites with deep content - I simply outgunned the content sites using a few high PR pages that were sharply SEOed.

Now the big sites with deep, rich, diverse, original content are ruling the roost. They get high rankings and are keyword vacuums!

Thanks for all the info, so i quess PR is still in the seo mix, but it seems its not as strong as is anchor text links right now for rankings

Hi,

Yes, the weighting of the factors shift over time. It is not impossible that PR will count more six months from now.

i know a lot of people think pagerank isn't very important because a site with lower pagerank may be ranked higher in serps than them. of course, pagerank is still important because if you have a backlink from a pr 6 site, it will count more than a backlink from a pr 3 site.

For me, I pay attention to any and all factors that G uses in determining where I place in the serps: PR, BL, relevance, kw density, etc., etc. You cannot ignore any aspect of it. In totality it determines your success or failure in the serps.

PR important...? Yes! We can argue how important. That really doesn't matter. The fact remains that it is used by G within their algo. It is an ingredient to the G recipe.

Totally agree, our focus should be on the on/off of a ranking criteria with regards to backlinks and PR not "how much" because the fact of the matter is if backlinks and PR count then really there is never "too much" this seperates it from other criteria such as onpage density, proximity, use of tags such as h1's and things of that nature where to much can hurt you (As can to little) so finding a good mix should be the focus of the factors you can control, Pr if your a good site you cant control because it will continue to get bigger and bigger whether you like it or not :-)

Definetly noticing the bigger the site, the better the rankings......

Funny - The old rule is still winning..... Content is King...

isnt all the big sites helped also alot by all the internal links as well?

If there anchored right - I don't see how it wouldn't help - your right about that though..