Will Facebook ever affect PR?

[Zetland]

I'm currently writing a blog and trying to increase its PageRank. The annoying thing is: people keep reposting articles I've written on Facebook and Twitter. From what I've learnt, all these links are NoFollow, so they don't affect PR in any way.

This means that I'm currently asking friends who blog to link to my site, trying to get published in blog directories that nobody reads - just to get a PR greater than 0/10. This just doesn't seem like a valuable way to rate a site's usefulness.

So, I ask, does Google have any ambition to make Facebook a determinant of PageRank? I know people would say that this would just lead to spam accounts - but there could also be a system for ranking Facebook accounts (based on factors like how long the account's existed for, how often the user posts links, whether they have a certain number of friends.) It just seems unfair otherwise.

[ChillDot]

In short yes. The social media circles are taking over the internet and becoming more and more important when it comes to website marketing. Google will not ignore this.

however i believe that the true question you need to ask yourself is why are you looking for page rank? are you going to sell the domain you are working on? if not then pagerank is a factor that you do NOT need to consider.

Yes it takes into account links to your site, however it is an outdated tool and very inaccurate ( it will only get updated once every 3 months or so).

My advice wouldbe to concentrate on building good content and high quality links where you can, if it makes you feel better the pageRank will come naturally

[Zetland]

however i believe that the true question you need to ask yourself is why are you looking for page rank? are you going to sell the domain you are working on? if not then pagerank is a factor that you do NOT need to consider.

I suppose my main reason is to attract an audience of exactly the kind of people who want to read my blog. My most popular post is currently on the ending to No Country for Old Men and the search "no country for old men ending" is a pretty popular one - but I'm aware that I only get about 9% of searchers because I'm ranked 10th. It'd be nice to make my audience as relevant as I can.

You're right though. I've looked at my 'referrers' and Reddit is the highest by a long way, followed by StumbleUpon and WordPress. None of these sites have anything to do with PR - but I do have to make submissions to attract an audience to my site, rather than allow them to come to me.

[ChillDot]

I suppose my main reason is to attract an audience of exactly the kind of people who want to read my blog. My most popular post is currently on the ending to No Country for Old Men and the search "no country for old men ending" is a pretty popular one - but I'm aware that I only get about 9% of searchers because I'm ranked 10th. It'd be nice to make my audience as relevant as I can.

You're right though. I've looked at my 'referrers' and Reddit is the highest by a long way, followed by StumbleUpon and WordPress. None of these sites have anything to do with PR - but I do have to make submissions to attract an audience to my site, rather than allow them to come to me.

Im not sure but i think you might be a little bit confused by PageRank, PR is calculated using the number of links you have pointing to your site with the higher PR of the site pointing to you then the more value it gives your page. hence mulitple links from high PR sites will result in you having a high PR on your site. (once the database is updated)

i dont think PR takes into consideration the relevance of a site in camparison to yours, although i may be mistaken.

I think you have good intentions but you might be looking at it slightly different to how i would.

If you are 10th for that search in google then you will probably be receiving about 0.1% (if that) of the search traffic for that search term. the top 3 will more than likely take around 90% alone.

in order to make your audience as relevant as you can you need to be targeting long tailed keywords so that you will rank for more specific searches.

i hope this has explained page rank a lil bit better. And I would pick relevance over PR for a link anyday, that way it may also drive some relevant traffic to your site as well as giving you a bit of link juice.

[joshz]

Facebook will NEVER affect PageRank.

Social signals MAY affect rankings/site trust.

These are APPLES and ORANGES.

[ClickyB]

Facebook will NEVER affect PageRank.

Social signals MAY affect rankings/site trust.

These are APPLES and ORANGES.

I couldn't agree more - I see no reason why they should consider SM links for PR, in fact I personally think they should (wish they would) hide PR forever... It does nothing but confuse people and lead to blackhat tactics by those who think that it will make a difference to their rankings in SERPS (or those who wish to sell domains for inflated prices).

@Zetland: Forget trying to increase your PR - it won't help your rankings... Try to find ways to build links outside of SM sites (and blogs for that matter) so that you get some meaningful backlinks (for ranking purposes)... PR will come in time (and it still won't make any difference when it does, but by then the value of the good quality backlinks will have).

[ChillDot]

Listen to these guys ^^ they know more than me!

And i think i confused myself inbetween talking about pagerank and google ranks lol ><.

When i said it will affect it, what i was thinking was it will affect google rankings, and you shouldnt be looking at pagerank,

Read my post back and it came out like i was saying something completely different. Bloody Mondays!

[Zetland]

@Zetland: Forget trying to increase your PR - it won't help your rankings...

Really? I thought your SERP rank was a product of your page's PR and the relevance of your page to the search query. So, if someone searched for "x", the page with the highest score (PR * relevance to "x") would be at the top of the listings. Is this false then?

[ChillDot]

Really? I thought your SERP rank was a product of your page's PR and the relevance of your page to the search query. So, if someone searched for "x", the page with the highest score (PR * relevance to "x") would be at the top of the listings. Is this false then?

yup completely, that was what i was trying to get accross. and failing.

the only thing page rank looks at is the links to your site.
Google uses lots more complex algorithms and looks at onpage stuff such as content, titles etc and then looks at relevance of links too.

Its alot more accurate than PR

[Zetland]

yup completely, that was what i was trying to get accross. and failing.

the only thing page rank looks at is the links to your site.
Google uses lots more complex algorithms and looks at onpage stuff such as content, titles etc and then looks at relevance of links too.

Its alot more accurate than PR

So is it fair to say that PR doesn't contribute to anything nowadays then?

[ClickyB]

So is it fair to say that PR doesn't contribute to anything nowadays then?

It contributes to a lot of wasted time and effort (although to be fair it probably keeps some of my competitors busy chasing rainbows whilst I'm busy ranking ahead of them)!

Google says it's one of 200 factors which they use to rank sites... (which simply means there are probably 199 other things which are more important)!

If you want proof, just check a handful of competitive KW searches; it won't take long for you to spot that the top rankings are not in order of PR.

The thing that matters is backlinks, they're what will propel you up the serps. Followed backlinks will increase your PR, but the effect on your serps depends on the relevance of the linking site(s)... So some (irrelevant) links will enhance your PR and yet have little to no effect on your rankings, whereas (followed) links from relevant sites with little or no PR will help improve your rankings; and highly relevant high PR sites will have a great effect in enhancing your rankings.

That's why PR is unimportant, it distracts you from what matters... relevance.
Unless of course you want to sell your domain or sell links to folks (who don't understand seo); then PR is all that matters

Bloody Mondays

[Zetland]

That's why PR is unimportant, it distracts you from what matters... relevance.
Unless of course you want to sell your domain or sell links to folks (who don't understand seo); then PR is all that matters

Heh, okay - but how does Google assess relevance? I'm currently studying Linguistics, so I know that there isn't a philosopher who can tell you what 'relevance' means - or how people judge one concept as being more relevant than another.

I've heard that Google looks for anchor text to find out what a page is about, as well as scanning a page for occurrences of certain words. Is this outdated and what other criteria does Google use? Sorry about all the questions. This'll probably be my last...

[nicks007]

I totally Disagree with click B

[vq_duy]

At first, I think Pr depend on quantity of backlink (and quality ofcause)
But backlink from social can make your trust rank increase .

I think trust rank is important, In longterm, it mỏre usefull for site than PR

[ClickyB]

Heh, okay - but how does Google assess relevance? I'm currently studying Linguistics, so I know that there isn't a philosopher who can tell you what 'relevance' means - or how people judge one concept as being more relevant than another.

I've heard that Google looks for anchor text to find out what a page is about, as well as scanning a page for occurrences of certain words. Is this outdated and what other criteria does Google use? Sorry about all the questions. This'll probably be my last...

No problem... and this is a good question... far too good for me to answer

You are right of course, it's not always obvious.
Fortunately, there are occasions when it's easy to see that sites are related, which gives us (and Google) a good basis from which to start.
Google rep's and industry and linguistics experts talk about link profiles revealing much about relevance... (meaning that the overall pattern of your link sources should be similar to other websites which are competing with you, and also that the sites that link to the sites that link to you should show similarities to others in your field etc etc).
One relatively (no pun intended) easy way (and quite popular in the SEO industry) is to analyse your competitors backlink profiles and try to get your backlinks from the same (or similar) sources, which is at least a good starting point.

As your linguistics studies - and seo knowledge - improves, I'm sure you'll get the idea... then perhaps you could come back and explain it all to me

I totally Disagree with click B

Mmmmmkay.... any particular reason, or are you just getting revenge for my disagreeing with your previous posts about keyword density?
I explained the reasons for my disagreements, perhaps you could do the same