This is SO not fair!

texxs · #1 (**permalink**) 10-21-2006, 05:56 PM

I know, I know there's probably a million poists like this one but sometimes you just have to spit it out:

This site:
http://www.in-sightsolutions.com/ has a PR of 4 on this index page and the interneal pages! It has exactly 0 onbound links from google.com only 14 from yahoo, 1 from hotbot, etc.

Take a lot at the keyowrds tag! no commas!
Take a look at the page, NO text!

How on earth is that twice as good to google as one of my PR 2 sites with 8 links on google, thousands elsewhere.? (redtideflorida.org for example).

Maybe it is all about who you know at google because it's obviously not about good sites or following certian rules.

RRRRGH! I'm so sick of google!

texxs · #2 (**permalink**) 10-21-2006, 06:03 PM

I think I've got it figured out, examining one of the sites that link to the site, the site is described as a web designers site. I guess he sold his domain name to a client?

Who knows, who cares. Google still sucks! worst search engine ever (besides ask.com).

Mods: you can remove this topic since I asked and answered my own question I suppose.

weslinda · #3 (**permalink**) 10-21-2006, 08:58 PM

It's okay...perhaps life will judge you better in your next life.

Unfortunately, it's not about what's fair, it's about the big boys, and Google is just that. I'm not sure why PR is so important to so many people, but I would move your focus away from PR, and move it towards client success.

A high or low PR is not a sign of success, attained goals and conversions are. Just a thought...of course, take it with a grain of salt if you'd like.

**incrediblehelp** · #4 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by weslinda

I'm not sure why PR is so important to so many people...

When you find out let me know because I want to laugh to.

weslinda · #5 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 07:53 PM

Visual validation is what most people want to see, and I guess PR gives that to web designers that are unsure of their real quality.

Oh well, I'll keep going in my corner.

Surendran · #6 (**permalink**) 10-24-2006, 10:59 AM

Ofcourse PR is an important factor when we talk about SERPS. It really need to be focussed with a long term process of link exchange and submission works.

weslinda · #7 (**permalink**) 10-24-2006, 11:03 AM

IMO Your PR does not affect your sites rank in the search engines results. People need to understand that, and when they do, they'll stop concerning themselves with it.

The only variable that PR can have on a page is the validation of your site when another site within your vertical with a higher PR voluntarily links to your page.

Webnauts · #8 (**permalink**) 10-25-2006, 02:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Quote:

Originally Posted by weslinda

I'm not sure why PR is so important to so many people...

When you find out let me know because I want to laugh to.

http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1467

texxs · #9 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 11:00 AM

PR is important because:

It gives our clients a measure of success or failure that they can easily view and understand

If you'll view just about any list of search results on google you'll notice that the one ones with the higher PR are 1- On the first page 2- ranked higher on the first page 3- yes there are exceptions, I know, clients don't (most of the time)

some other SE's use PR to determine which pages to rank higher in their SERP's

When a site goes up or down in the rankings, the PR almost always mirrors this (or the other way around)

Doesn't Gogle even say they base which pages are ranked higher based on PR? (I know they lie all the time anyway . . .)

And yes webmasters like the instant visual feed back

weslinda · #10 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 11:06 AM

Your clients should have a better idea of success or failure of a site than PR. There should be some specific conversion that determines success. If those conversions aren't increasing, then the site isn't a success, no matter how high the PR.

I've seen no proof that PR affects SERP in any way. I've seen results for pages I've done with lots of lower PR ranked higher than a page that has a higher PR.

I've seen no such statement from Google saying PR is a measurable statement of SERP.

Well, if your instant feedback is a little green bar, and not results for your clients, I'm not sure what I can say to that.

If we do measure ourselves on the PR, then I'm a rockstar because I built a site that went from basically no PR to homepage of 6, deep PR through the site of 4 or 5 for most pages, and all within 12 months.

However, my success with that site was measurable beyond PR because we took them from 0 lead generation on their site to over 1200 leads a year worth a minimum of $3k if they closed each deal.

texxs · #11 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 12:24 PM

Quote:

0 lead generation on their site to over 1200 . . .

And your PR went from 0 to 6, PR was reflecting your success. (congratulations btw, good work!)

As for clients expectations, well some of them don't even know about PR, and I just leave it that way. But the ones that do just point to sites above thiers in the SERP's and those site's higher PR and that's all they want to talk about. Can you blame them?

Obviously there is a link between PR and higher placement of a site on the SERP's. I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it does factor in every single time to some extent.

I too have a site w/ a PR of 1 that's the first in google's SERP for it's chosen keyphrase (but think how well it would do for keyphrase 2, or 3 etc if it had a PR of 7!). So I know that occasionally it will work but obviously the rule is on SERP's the sites on the first page have higher PR than sites on the second page, mostly.
Therefore it's really hard for me to swallow when people try to say PR isn't important. Of course i've been wrong before, but I really don't see it this time. What does everyone else reading this think?

weslinda · #12 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 12:29 PM

PR does not make my client a penny. Converting high quality traffic does. That's my point.

And I can show thousands of searches where lower PR pages come in above higher PR pages.

PR is simply a visual statement that someone thinks there is some worth to the page. In terms of results, it isn't worth crap IMHO.

westie · #13 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 02:40 PM

I'm inclined to agree with texxs over the value of PR in serp. For strong keywords site seem to be ranked according to PR value. This can easily be checked with a popular keyword such as 'chocolates' - all sites on first page are PR4 - PR6 with average of PR5. Similarly for 'hotels' all sites on first page are PR6 and above - average is PR6.6! Not a PR3 or below anywhere! Presumanly all the adverts sites are the low PR sites?

How can you say that PR does not affect ranking - PR is it, as far as G are concerned. Google is Pagerank - thats what they invented, thats what the patented, thats what lies at the heart of the system. Admittedly there are several other factors involved such as keywords etc but to deny PR is important in ranking is just naive.

regards

weslinda · #14 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 02:47 PM

Show me one shred of evidence from Google that PR is a major point for SERP results.

That's all I'm asking. And really, we're in the business to help our visitors achieve a certain level of results.

Tell me why http://www.trueevaulting.com/ with PR 4 is higher than my client with a PR of 6? Or even better, why are they higher that Data Storage solutions from HP or Dell or IBM or SUN?

PR is simply a review of a page. It's PR does not truly affect results. However, I would agree that if your page is linked to by another site with higher PR, then that link is looked at in higher value.

I think we're completely missing what PR is for. It's not a SEO tool. It is not the tool to judge your success as a web guy. It should be an after thought to all that are out there.

One note, it is a great way for people to feel like they need the Google Toolbar so that Google can constantly monitor their web visits, and sites and such to gather information on their habits and provide better ads for that particular client. Neat how that works isn't it?

greeneagle · #15 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 05:35 PM

Quoting Randfish from the article Webnauts posted above:

Quote:

"GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated & Manual Penalties)"

If "relativity" plays as significant a roll as many of us suspect it does now, where does it fit in there, across the board? Let's break it out by itself and call it "Site Relativity Ranking". IMO - It's way too import of a factor now to spread out like peanut butter. It commands it's own place.

I see the beast in simplistic denominators more like this:

Site Relativity Ranking =.25
IBLs = .2
KW usage = .15
Content Quality = .15
Domain Strength = .1
User Data = .1
OBLs = .05

Trying to squeeze a very complex system into a handful of denominators is crazy enough without throwing "venial vs cardinal" webmaster sins into the equation. Forget penalties for now - that's another envelope.

I firmly believe that an overall relativity ranking is at least as important if not better now than IBLs in the ranking hierarchy.

Ken

westie · #16 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 06:11 PM

[quote="weslinda"]Show me one shred of evidence from Google that PR is a major point for SERP results.

This is the sort of thing I think points to the importance of PR is Serps.

If I do a search for seaside resorts on G at number 3 is
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/a...de_resorts.asp

How relevant is microsoft to the seaside? I know its a nice article and it is relevant but it is also on a PR6 site and the page is PR4. These factors seem to out rank almost any thing else. My site dosn't even appear in the serps - but then its only PR2! I find it very difficult not to believe it is all down to PR scores. My site is highly relevant, has lots of original content, is not trying to spam and is reasonably OK with regard to layout and nav. BUT we don't have very good IBL. Thats it as far as I'm concerned.

With regard to Kens post - I think your right about the rough layout but I would reverse the values of OBL and IBL making the latter .5 - I think they still dominate the whole process. G is built on IBL and every thing else comes well second.

Regards W

greeneagle · #17 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 06:14 PM

OOOOOPS - Sorry westie that was supposed to be a ".05" instead of a ".5" on the OBLs at about 5% value. IMO - IBLs have a recognizable voice now.

I fixed it, nothing else changed.

Ken

texxs · #18 (**permalink**) 10-27-2006, 12:12 AM

Actually the site you pointed out isn't on the first page for any of it's (first 3) keyphrases. In fact most of the pages on the first page of the SERP's have a higher PR than yours (4).

Quote:

Show me one shred of evidence from Google that PR is a major point for SERP results.

The page in the second example is a Microsoft page, which is part of the "private club" or authority sites like wikipedia and the DMOZ and .edu's.

Here's another very strong piece of evidence showing that PR is the most consistenly important factor in a web sites SE prescense:

Quote:

"The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages . . ."

- that's from Google themselves. It's what the whole Search Engine is based on (that and IMO, favoritism, aka the "private club")

Also that's pretty much all they talk about in the ranking section of their FAQ's.

PR is definetly NOT a "PR is simply a review of a page" Google PR has very very little to with quality content as google is mostly about the number of links you recieve and who those links are from. That says nothing directly about the content.

I concede that sometimes low PR sites be listed above HighPR sites in some searches that are a more exact matches to their content. But that's the exception, not the rule.

I'm with you on the toolbar thing too! google sucks, don't they! that's why I don't use thier toolbar nor their SE - except when researching things like this post, thier searches suck too)

I'm also pretty sure they maually weigh some directories sites for certian categories in order to extremly increase sales of adverts (like "restaraunts in city XXXX"), because after all if you gave them what they wanted, why would anyone click ever an advert?

greeneagle · #19 (**permalink**) 10-27-2006, 12:13 AM

texxs - Try cleaner code and a better than 15% Content to Code Ratio and let us know if it makes a difference..

Ken

greeneagle · #20 (**permalink**) 10-27-2006, 12:22 AM

Surely most of us here know that internal PR is updated constantly and is more the beast that indicates raw alg data that drives SERP...and, that the "quarterly" public PR (green bar) updates are nothing but an occasional public translation from that much more complex internal PR system! That's just SEO/SEM-101 there, isn't it?

Ken

texxs · #21 (**permalink**) 10-27-2006, 12:26 AM

I will! It hurt when (way back in the day) ya'll told me to get rid of my flash intro that my client's loved so much but they made a drastic improvement. So I'll try just about anything ya'll say.

It's something I've been meaning to do just been busy with clientsa (and screwing around on this forum, and moving to new apt, getting ready for new baby, etc.).

I'm assuming you mean on texxsmith.com? or the redtide site? the redtide sites a word press blog and I don't want to screw with the code too much. (typos = baaaaad things!)