Deverill Posted June 8, 2004 Posted June 8, 2004 How important is PR or PageRank to your site? I wanted to take a minute and share something I found out and is kind of interesting. First, PageRank is Google's measure of how important your site is based on the number and types of links to your page in question. The other search engines may use a similar thing but I've not heard of it. PR only applies to Google's measuring method. Second, remember that Google's not the only game in town. Recently, Google was pretty much not going to rank you well unless you had a lot of links to your page. "A lot" varied based on the competition for your search phrase, but in a competitive arena you would not get a high placement unless you had a high PR. I read an article that brings up an interesting point. It seems Google may be devaluating the PR portion of their ranking formula. There are tons of things they look at to decide where to rank your site, but PR was King and it may be losing some of its value. It is too early to be sure! but here's an interesting thing they brought out. For a search on "Grill equipment" the top returned Google pages had the following PR values according to the toolbar and in this order: PR 1,0,3,0,3,0,0,1,4,5 There were other examples as well. Now, this may be a fluke or they may be in the middle of recalculating things and everything goes upside down for awhile when they do, but this just goes to strengthen what many SEO's have been saying forever - don't obsess on PR - make good pages for good customers and have good results instead of trying to manipulate the search engines and be on top today and gone tomorrow. I hope this helps someone sleep well knowing that PR isn't worth losing sleep over... unless someone's paying you a lot to do that!
whoahorse Posted March 22, 2005 Posted March 22, 2005 Hey Jim, this is a VERY imformative post.... Do you know the name of that site that actually tells the ranking of a website and its expectations for the websites future? Weezy
carbonize Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 I have studied SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and I have discussed such things in web design forums. We are all pretty much agreed that Googles Page Ranking means diddly squat in the real world.
whoahorse Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 Well, the average idiot sees Google as the web God. I'll take a good ranking on Google anyday. LOL Weezy
carbonize Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 Yes but page rank has nothing to do with where you will come in a Google search for a particular query.
annie Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 (edited) Agreed, PR doesn't mean much. A week ago or so, I notified a dynamic IP host that one of the users was spamming. Instead of disabling the address, they put in a 302 redirect to my post exposing the spammer. Fast forward a week, and that address has been banned in Google (did the honors myself), but I come up third in MSN for a very dirty phrase, and pretty high up in Yahoo for a similar dirty phrase. I now get a significant amount of hits from the search engines from people who look for ahem, perverted .... Very weird. Unintended search engine occurrences. I bet my expose on the spammer ranks much better than the spammer could have ranked on his original page. No contest really. There are other pages I haven't succeeded in having yanked yet (I bet the admins in Denmark are on Easter holiday, that's a big deal here in Scandinavia), so it's possible to make comparisons. Edited March 23, 2005 by annie
carbonize Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 I used to be a regular on the webproworld forums (I suggest avoiding them these days) and used to get annoyed at idiots who used to have things like Ranked number one in Google as part of their signature. For a childish revenge I changed my signature to Ranked number one on Google - If you do a search for carbonize that is!. Just my way of saying a high Google ranking is pointless unless its for something that is relevant to your business and going to actually get searched for.
owatagal Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 I find Page Rank useful because it gives me an overall idea of how my incoming links are doing. When I do a link search in google itself, half the links I know about don't show up--I heard somewhere (a man in a pub, right?) that google doesn't show all site links on purpose. So when my page rank goes up, I have a general sense that incoming links have also gone up, and I can comb through my stats a little more thoroughly to see where they're coming from. As a general sort of link meter, it's not completely useless.
Deverill Posted March 23, 2005 Author Posted March 23, 2005 Very true, all. PR is indeed worthless and does not refer to where you show up in a search but rather to an arbitrary number Google invented that they don't even rely very much on. Anyone can be #1 on Google - if their search term is "oenuthaurcah.rc" (which this post will probably be #1 for in a week or two ) That also means nothing and is why so many places guarantee #1 ranking or top 10 ranking. There are only 2 things as I see it that matter. 1. Is the person who is looking to buy your product ending up at your site? 2. Are they actually pulling out the wallet once they get there? Other than that it's all just academic. Weezy, one site I just found (on Google) was www.top25web.com/pagerank.php. I plugged in one of my sites and it says page rank is 4 of 10 but when you go to Google and search for "key west fishing charter boat" (very specific and not a big deal to be #1) the site is #1 of about 317,000 sites and if you do "key west fishing" (very vague with quite a bit of competition) it is #28 of 1,820,000 sites relating to that phrase. PR of 4 is fairly lame as far as PR goes so it's obviously not a big factor in where I'm showing up in the searches.
whoahorse Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 I am confused between page rank and where your link ranks on the list at google. For example, the most important search words for me are: equine web design and horse web design as that is how people find me. Equine web design I am second and horse web design I am first. I thought that was ranking but I am wrong. LOL Thats link ranking maybe? Weezy
carbonize Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 People actualy search for horse web design and equine web design?
whoahorse Posted March 23, 2005 Posted March 23, 2005 www.top25web.com/pagerank.php Interesting site Jim! Weezy
Deverill Posted March 24, 2005 Author Posted March 24, 2005 Weezy, the difference is that "Page Rank" is a term Google uses to represent (or misrepresent) how important they think a page is based on the number and types of sites linking to it. Some experts think Google is using it to "throw people off" so they can't figure out the way Google thinks and thus scam the results. It is basically bogus at this time and means nothing to anyone, IMO. Your placement on the engines when searching for key phrases is what many call SERP placement which stands for Search Engine Results Page placement. They are very different things indeed. The SERP for your keyword is what will bring folks to your site. The PR will just waste your time and have you chasing your tail.
OldTimer Posted March 24, 2005 Posted March 24, 2005 Good reading, good info. ( I like SERP with my pancakes. Greg
TCH-Don Posted March 24, 2005 Posted March 24, 2005 Yep, I gave up and concentrate on what I think some one will search for. For me it works great!
whoahorse Posted March 24, 2005 Posted March 24, 2005 Thanks Jim, your posts are so very helpful to me and you have a great way of explaining things Weezy
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