STOP asking about Google PR (READ THIS FIRST).

[shinny]

i have too seen lot of sites that has no pagerank infomation but still are on top of kywrds search

[BeforeGoogle]

It seems that too many people still are "focused" on that little green bar. So here is a lighter look at it.

In 2002 the government launched a secret project.
It was called PR.
It was designed to get millions of people trading money online to help a struggling economy. It worked. Millions of webmasters started buying links, building sites, and creating new software for this "program".
Years later new people that are exposed to it somehow still fall under its magical spell.
End of story.

[siju]

Nice post actually I was behind the magic green bar. But if the PR is not the exact health of a web page, the only way is keep on checking the rank of our site in google with relevant keywords?
Anyway the story was very nice.

[lfc]

I understand what you are doing here, yet I think it is a bit over the top.

If not to count the situations where Google has removed the PR or lowered it, it indicates the incoming link power. It doesn't say if they are few good links or 100's of crap links but it shows that the total PR value is X or Z.

I quite like the initial interpretation of PageRank - as probability to find your website. Considering web is growing in enormous amounts it is just makes sense to have PR. No PageRank - no chances to find you (for reasonable keywords of course).

The other thing in beginning of 2006 when the duplicate content issues started to take off and supplemental index showed up, Matt Cutts told us - you need more PageRank to get more pages indexed. And I can understand why Google does this - it saves them resources and allows to avoid indexing possibly some spam.

Still going back to the old good days, as one of my favorite SEO guys said: Pages creates page rank, Links passes PageRank. OR can we say Links = PageRank. PageRank = Links. Good links passes more PR, bad links passes less PR.

To rank - you need Content and Links, so Pages and PageRank.

What I wanted to say, you can't ignore PR. And no, we don't need to go into relevant links etc. It's standard procedure to have relevant links, etc. No need to fool around this topic.

But ask your self, all factors being equal, would you want 1 link from PR1 site, or 1 link from PR4 page.


If somebody is going to say PR1 site, then I'd love to hear why, because all other things being equal I'd love to hear a very good reason.

Ok, my rant is over.

p.s. Answer: both is not accepted

p.s. maybe somebody can look at PR issue thread: forums.seochat.com/google-page-rank-47/very-odd-pagerank-distribution-pr5-site-messed-up-233140.html

[fathom]

It's important to appreciate that high PageRank isn't needed to rank a page... but some PageRank is needed to keep a page in the primary archive... and being in the primary archive (more pages, that is) is actually far more important than ranking your homepage (where most people try to gain PageRank.)

[BeforeGoogle]

It's important to appreciate that high PageRank isn't needed to rank a page... but some PageRank is needed to keep a page in the primary archive... and being in the primary archive (more pages, that is) is actually far more important than ranking your homepage (where most people try to gain PageRank.)

I agree.
Also, I will admit that I look at sites PR before sometimes buying their products or services. For me, it does build some level of trust to know that a site is a PR7 with an alexa of 25,000 vs a site that is a PR1 and 2,000,000, for the same product.
PR is earned and easily lost. While I think it has little to do with SERPs I do think that overall it has its values in many areas.

[lfc]

Thanks fathom for agreeing

I'd like to expand on this:

First of all, I'm looking at PR to identify link quality when checking competitors for terms, and then looking at actual link count. This way you normally will identify:

- average PR you will need to rank there
- the quality of links to get that PR (if its not internal, e.g. big authority/leading sites)
- the page type that ranks

Probably we could illustrate some things also by real examples, e.g. this search:
google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=car+hire+madrid&btnG=Search&meta=

What do we see in top 20?
- 99% are internal pages (good thing)
- average PR is 3-4, some PR5 and PR2 can be seen.
- backlink count is not very big so the big portion of PR is coming from internal links (good)
- big time numbers for total backlinks for the domains ranking (makes the game complicated)


So, guys, how you would rank up for these terms in top 10 without a PageRank? Few low PR0-1 links wont make your page up there (at least, not that easily). One would need good relevant and high PR links. Thus - you want and you care about the old good PageRank

If I'm wrong, you're welcome to correct me.

p.s. No web 2.0 tricks please.

[lewisdb]

I agree.
Also, I will admit that I look at sites PR before sometimes buying their products or services. For me, it does build some level of trust to know that a site is a PR7 with an alexa of 25,000 vs a site that is a PR1 and 2,000,000, for the same product.
PR is earned and easily lost. While I think it has little to do with SERPs I do think that overall it has its values in many areas.

How many searchers that do not have a background in seo,sem web design etc do you think even know what PR is let alone use it for their buying decisions?

[gazzahk]

But ask your self, all factors being equal, would you want 1 link from PR1 site, or 1 link from PR4 page.

I rarely visit this thread but did today and read some of the recent posts. So I will answer your question. Firstly all factors in relation to links are never equal. My view is trust is the most valuable commodity you can own in terms of SERPs for google. I beleive trust is site wide not page wide. Thus I would not even put in the same league a PR 4 link from Billyboys home page to a PR1 link from www.harvard.edu/ Thus focusing on PR is a distraction and can misslead. It blinkers you to what is truely a valuable link. The best link to get is from highly trusted sites. You say lets not go down the relivence discussion... I agree in someways but for difference reasons as raised here http://forums.seochat.com/link-popularity-43/trust-versus-relevance-238659.html The fact that higher page rank is an indicator (indicates does not prove) of a stronger site is really only true for home page PR and not necessarily the case for inner page PR. If you are implying from your question that you had a choice of the PR1 link and the PR 4 link from the same site. If the PR1 link was on a very relivent page and the PR4 link on a totally irrelivent page then once again my view is the PR1 link would aid your site more. This link will help themed relivence.

The problem is PR does show something but not the things people want it to show. Therefore people chase it for what they perceive it to show rather then chase the things that actually do matter....

[SEO_AM]

Unless you are selling links... FORGET ABOUT PAGE RANK. The only thing that matters is SEO is PLACEMENT IN THE SERPs. To achieve high SERP placement you have to get trusted relevant links REGARDLESS OF PAGE RANK of the linked from page.

Bottomline: LET PAGE RANK TAKE CARE OF ITSELF.

[Irmscher]

Yeah, the OP is right

there are to many discussions around PR and its value

sometimes ppl start forgetting about common sense SEO thinking that high PR will save the whole day.

Pr is just an algorithm of Google and as I understand when your website gets PR it has passed sandbox successfully.

cheers

[Dylan55]

I think this thread doesn't answer the needs of other who really crumbled their mind in PR.

[ClickyB]

...I understand when your website gets PR it has passed sandbox successfully.

No... PR and "the Sandbox" are not connected at all.

I think this thread doesn't answer the needs of other who really crumbled their mind in PR.

In what way?

[emmaonline]

Just to solidify the OPs point:

I have a site with a Page Rank of 4 which out ranks sites with PR5s and PR6s for most major keywords.

[stevenh]

I can't get over how people strap on their PR ankle weights just before jogging to a 7/11 to gorge on a caffeine laden big gulp and a bag of donuts.

You might have to think about that analogy for a moment.


If all you look at is PR to gauge the health of a website then you'd be doomed to failure. There's far too many variables in website marketing, optimization and promotion to focus on PR for more than a minute or two. PR is nice to have but by no means an honest representation of a websites contextual value. I totally agree... you can have a PR1-2-3 and land serp well above a site that is a PR4-5-6-7. This fact alone proves that PR is a trophy more than a tool.

Cheers