Is Google Page Rank really that important?

[Tig]

I run a community web site, and we have enjoyed a page rank of 6 for several years. In the past few months, Google has dropped it to a 3, and I became concerned.
However, it hasn't affected the number of people that actually come to the site at all, and it hasn't affected our search results either.

For instance, the site I'm talking about is Daffodil Valley Times - A community Web site for Tacoma, Seattle, and Western Washington..
The page rank has dropped to 3 (it was PR6 in January), but we are still top of the results for:
tacoma online calendar, tacoma webcams, mt st helens, and many other keywords.
We get up to 800 visits a day (and it's actually gone up in the past couple of months).

So it's brought up the question in my mind: How important is Google page ranking really?

[incrediblehelp]

Well Toolbar PR is not important at all. Not sure when it ever was.

[coolguy27]

Important to those selling PR.... the green thing you see in your toolbar is actually months old so why bother...

[crankydave]

If the TBPR drop was recent, it's quite possibly due to the advertising (links) you're selling and not tagging them "nofollow". There's quite a few recent threads on the forum about it.

The fact that your traffic and rankings hasn't suffered lends some confirmation to my suspicions that the recent TBPR drops were only to the toolbar and not to the internal metrics... for now anyway.

So from a traffic and ranking perspective there doesn't appear to be anything to concern yourself about... for now. If indeed this is the reason, there's nothing to say that Google won't apply the "drop" in ways that can affect your rankings in the future. Depends upon how much traffic you get from your Google rankings as to whether or not it's an issue.

From an advertising perspective, if your advertisers were purchasing their spots strictly for the TBPR, then they'll quite likely be less inclined to do so going forward. If you add the "nofollow" tag to all the paid advertisements to get your TBPR back, same thing holds true... if your advertisers were simply after "the green" they'll likely not be interested.

Dave

[kgun]

Originally Posted by crankydave

If indeed this is the reason, there's nothing to say that Google won't apply the "drop" in ways that can affect your rankings in the future.

1. Yes.
2. Wrong to generalize.
3. How competitive are the KW's?

Originally Posted by crankydave

The fact that your traffic and rankings hasn't suffered lends some confirmation to my suspicions that the recent TBPR drops were only to the toolbar and not to the internal metrics... for now anyway.

Others have told so too, so most probably you are correct.

[tomcatuk]

I'ts tempting to get worried about how much "green" your pages have, but after seeing the drops after the last update I've totally given up on trying to make any sense of what Google's TBPR has to do with SERPS. It seems to have no relevance at all.

I would only see cause for concern if you get a greyed out TBPR. The interesting thing about a greyed out TBPR is it seems it can happen at any time - not just when an update has happened. Similarly, you can get a "zero" (white TBPR) on a new page when no update has happened which I believe (rightly or wrongly) would indicate your page has "made it" into the index.

[kgun]

Look at this thread and the comments:

A Little Piece of the Google Algorithm - Revealed

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)


Where

Inbound Link Score

• Age of links
• Quality of domains sending links
• Quality of pages sending links
• Anchor text of links
• Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
• Subject matter of linking pages/sites

Inbound Link Score * 0.25.

Any better formula or only pure guessing around own sites? Come on WPW members, beat this forumla.

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by crankydave

If the TBPR drop was recent, it's quite possibly due to the advertising (links) you're selling and not tagging them "nofollow". There's quite a few recent threads on the forum about it.

The fact that your traffic and rankings hasn't suffered lends some confirmation to my suspicions that the recent TBPR drops were only to the toolbar and not to the internal metrics... for now anyway.

So from a traffic and ranking perspective there doesn't appear to be anything to concern yourself about... for now. If indeed this is the reason, there's nothing to say that Google won't apply the "drop" in ways that can affect your rankings in the future. Depends upon how much traffic you get from your Google rankings as to whether or not it's an issue.

From an advertising perspective, if your advertisers were purchasing their spots strictly for the TBPR, then they'll quite likely be less inclined to do so going forward. If you add the "nofollow" tag to all the paid advertisements to get your TBPR back, same thing holds true... if your advertisers were simply after "the green" they'll likely not be interested.

Dave

Hmmmm, I don't think traffic has got a great deal to do with rankings, in fact I would go as far as saying - not related.

Yes we all check our stats because it's nice to see how many visitors you are attracting. But you maybe in a high traffic league of search terms or ones that get very few or just 20 or so per day - I'm in that bracket - I don't get 'volume searches' - not the stuff that some of you guys get. But I have been on page one or two for 6 years now.

NOW, I will concede that if you are in a high traffic area you might think that your traffic is affecting SERP - but it could also be said that the new sites on the block are using different tatics.

I am open to info on this - but I am going by pure personal experience -

[ctabuk]

After posting that I thought - Am I right??

Well according to Old Welsh Guy - I am
Does traffic has correlation with search engine ranking? [Archive] - eSyndiCat Support Forums


Come on CD - we always have fun when I get controversial

[crankydave]

There is no controversy David.

A site that ranks highly for search phrases and gets traffic from them, will lose that particular traffic if they lose those rankings.

In the case of the OP, as I said, depends upon how much traffic they get from their ranked phrases as whether or not it's an issue if Google decides to apply the drop they see in TBPR to internal metrics that affect ranking. At this point, it doesn't appear that they have.

If only 1% of their total traffic comes from their highly ranked search phrases then losing those rankings may not be that big an issue. On the other hand, if 50% of their total traffic comes from their highly ranked search phrases then losing those rankings is definitely an issue.

Dave

[wige]

Actually, as far as traffic, I have seen a study that indicated click-through rates on the SERPs could affect rankings. If for a certain search a site comes up in the #3 spot, for example, but draws an unusually high percentage of clicks, the search engine may move that result up higher. This is part of determining user intent - if the closest match according to the algorithm is not drawing it's share of clicks, the engine may determine it is not accurately figuring out searchers' intent and will try to adapt. This is even more true with Google, which can to a certain extent monitor user behavior after the user leaves the SERP.

[dartman]

Originally Posted by Tig

I run a community web site, and we have enjoyed a page rank of 6 for several years. In the past few months, Google has dropped it to a 3, and I became concerned. However, it hasn't affected the number of people that actually come to the site at all, and it hasn't affected our search results either.
The page rank has dropped to 3 (it was PR6 in January), but we are still top of the results ...

With a top ranking (most important) what difference do green pixels (least important) make?

[tomcatuk]

Surely the question is if the green pixels are Googles' measure of a pages importance, why have so many pages that don't appear to have lost SERPs dropped so dramatically in TBPR. Like everyone else, I've noticed some really huge drops - so Google is trying to stop people selling links based on PR value if they don't tow the line on rel=nofollow. What really baffles me is just how they managed this via an algorithmic method - the idea that they reviewed the entire internet "by hand" is obviously an impossibility so now we're all going to be fighting a new battle working out whether Google thinks we have been paid for outbounds whether we have or not.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by coolguy27

Important to those selling PR.... the green thing you see in your toolbar is actually months old so why bother...

Isn't it important for the ones that buy links? Just thinking out lod.

[edhan]

Basically it is impressive to see the green bar when comparing with others. For me, I am more concern about targetted traffic that I can view from my logs and search ranking. Of course if I can have a longer green bar, I will be happy!

[joe90]

if I were Google, I would be interested in knowing click-through rates from results pages.

As wige says, if a site in the #3 spot were getting a lot more click-throughs than the site in the #2 spot, I might consider swapping them around.

I might not be concerned by total traffic to the two sites, but click-throughs from that particular results page would seem to be a useful and relevant indicator.

[dartman]

Originally Posted by joe90

if I were Google, I would be interested in knowing click-through rates from results pages. .

I'd be willing to bet that ctr is a consideration when determining serp ranking
in the big scheme of things Google.