What use is Google page rank?

[hostelman]

Does Google page rank actually mean anything, except bragging rights for the boys?

I see a lot of sites with High Page Rank, but they rank low on many of their major key words, on the other hand you have low Page Rank sites that rank high on Google for their major key words.

So my question is, or can anyone tell me what use is Google Page Rank.

[alhefner]

There is a lot of debate on that very subject! If you are speaking of toolbar ranking, it isn't a huge concern for SEO as it is different than Google's internals and you won't really know what that is either.

So, bottom line in my opinion, keep writing using good satandard SEO practices and your pages will show well in a search no matter what the page rank happens to be on a toolbar. My blog comes in on the first page, often in position #1, for very specific terms and I am happy with that for the blog. Now, I am working on a new site and will apply the SEO lessons I learned to it and will see where I get to for that one.

[david_us]

Yes page rank is not important for google to rank your sites in google search engine optimization also play and important role in seo



thanks

[digitalseo]

if you are talking about the PR(green toolbar)...its just only a measurement of backlinks...some other say that this is not important, but still it plays a vital role...anyway, focus more on gaining quality backlinks and do link building..

[edhan]

One thing I look for in business is not teh Google page rank but the targetted traffic it can bring to me. I am more interested in conversion for all the traffic it is bringing than to be concerned of the page rank.

Build a targetted content site for your products and make them convert into sales will be your top most concern.

[davidweb]

Originally Posted by hostelman

Does Google page rank actually mean anything, except bragging rights for the boys?

I see a lot of sites with High Page Rank, but they rank low on many of their major key words, on the other hand you have low Page Rank sites that rank high on Google for their major key words.

So my question is, or can anyone tell me what use is Google Page Rank.

PAGE RANK IS LIKE A BIG FART OF GOOGLE ALGORITHM

You can hear it ( from other webmasters), but dont know why it came or where it came from ( ie usability of PR).

Page rank is nowhere related to actual rankings of any website, and yet there are thousands of webmasters discussing issues like "My PR has dropped from 3->2".

Ignore PR and concentrate on your actual rankings on both Yahoo and Google

[nelsonez]

I think what people are missing is that the Google Page Rank system does not seem to be updated very often. So yes it is somewhat of an indication of backlinks to a particular site but many times the rank that you see for a site could be based on Google's analysis 6 months prior. That is why it becomes very difficult to assess and can at times seem almost impossible to believe. Some people even think that Google may be phasing this measurement out completely. No one but Google can really know this for sure.

The Google page rank metric should be just one of multiple means to assess how a site is doing. I certainly would not use this metric exclusively to compare two sites and make any accurate judgement based on that.

Eric

[martty]

Of course PR is important. The tool bar PR is not as important as its a historical representation of the internal Google PR.

PR is one factor (a small one in the ranking algorithm); PR is a measure of the number and quality of the links to a site (and the links are an important ranking factor); PR is a key factor in determining how often and deeply a site is crawled.

Nelonez - ...Google updates PR daily; when it does export to the tool bar, the consensus was that its about 2 weeks old at that stage.

[Webnauts]

PageRank (not toolbar) is the primary google search ranking factor!
Check my recent thread about this:Is PageRank the Primary Google Search Ranking Factor?

[Webnauts]

Let me add this one too here:

Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) confirmed that if you have less PageRank can also mean that a site wont rank well:

Quote:
ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It
looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that.
For example, if you had been attempting to get PageRank via paid links
on various templates, then when that PageRank stops flowing (e.g. if
Google improves its detection in various ways), the fact that you have
less PageRank can also mean that a site won't rank as well.
If that applies to you, my advice would be to pay special attention to
that issue, in addition to the other good advice you've already
gotten.
Matt
More: Please Help! -60 penalty from Google due to proxy site. - Crawling, indexing, and ranking | Google Groups

[incrediblehelp]

Good quote from Dave in that thread of John's:

Originally Posted by crankydave

Ranking=Relevance x Everything that affects and/or influences relevance

Dont worry about PR cause your never going to know what it is for your websites. You will, however, be able to control the great content you write, the architecture of your website and the ability to get great back links to your website.

[uberanimal]

Originally Posted by digitalseo

if you are talking about the PR(green toolbar)...its just only a measurement of backlinks...some other say that this is not important, but still it plays a vital role...anyway, focus more on gaining quality backlinks and do link building..

Ditto on what he is saying. although... the normal internet surfers to not pay attention to PR nor do they even have a google toolbar with PR enabled. So to the average internet user it means nothing. it is more of a mesure of your backlinks. i have seen junk sites have a PR7 or even higher and the site is just junk with no good information. So that says anyone can have a high PR with a little work on created several backlinks by posting links in other places on the net. It does take a bit of work for a high PR though, it is not easy.

[digitalseo]

Originally Posted by uberanimal

Ditto on what he is saying. although... the normal internet surfers to not pay attention to PR nor do they even have a google toolbar with PR enabled. So to the average internet user it means nothing. it is more of a mesure of your backlinks. i have seen junk sites have a PR7 or even higher and the site is just junk with no good information. So that says anyone can have a high PR with a little work on created several backlinks by posting links in other places on the net. It does take a bit of work for a high PR though, it is not easy.

for a normal internet surfer off course the first thing you need to pay attention is the "Content" not the "PR" coz PR is nothing for them..for internet marketers PR is important for them..

[davidweb]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

PageRank (not toolbar) is the primary google search ranking factor!
Check my recent thread about this:Is PageRank the Primary Google Search Ranking Factor?

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT

I still wonder why people go mad about that SMALL green bar.

The actual rankings of your website are different from TOOLBAR Page Rank

[david_us]

its is very important for link popularity of the site , traffic etc



thanks

[Peter (IMC)]

Pagerank is a simple calculation that is a combined indicator of the quantity and quality of links in other pages pointing at your page.

They´re using it as a basis of all their other algorithms. For example, they can see a pagerank value of your page for a specific keyword.

The toolbar of Google shows a green bar that is a logarithmical indication of the total amount of pagerank that they calculated for your page.

Since pagerank is not the only algorithm, but merely the most basic algorithm that they have, you can't say that the highest pagerank page will rank highest. As in the example I just gave, for a specific keyword pagerank is different. Thus toolbar may show a high PR page rank very low.

It's not something to worry about, (though it is a fun subject) but it does make it easier to do a quick review of a website.

[Webnauts]

Google says:

Google's spiders regularly crawl the web to rebuild our index. Crawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.
Our crawl process is algorithmic; computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. We don't accept payment to crawl a site more frequently. For tips on maintaining a crawler-friendly website, please visit our webmaster guidelines.

How often does Google crawl the web?

If that is not an issue for you, then no need to worry. And this is only one of many reasons why PageRank is important. NOT THE TOOLBAR THOUGH!

[full house]

As I know, PR is not important in getting good position in the SERP.

[kgun]

To my knowledge, Google was the first Se company that inverted the link matrix of the web. That is IMO still the heart of their model, but that model is adjusted (complemented) by advanced spam filters etc. I think it is extremely difficult to beat what I will call the adaptive inverted link matrix model. (Scroll down to my first post).

Toolbar PageRank is a delayed correlated metric of the true internal pagerank and the only measure you can observe. Temperature in a geopoint is the output of a complex high dimensional system, but easy to measure. Toolbar pagerank is like the average temperature of the seasons. It is a function of IBL's, the adaptive inverted link matrix of the web.

[sushil]

Page rank is the impotent tool for SEO,it make easy to check page rank of any website.

[kgun]

It ought to be a relatively stable function of supplying good content and getting (building) relevant IBL's. Period.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by davidweb

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT

I still wonder why people go mad about that SMALL green bar.

The actual rankings of your website are different from TOOLBAR Page Rank

Most of the confusion about PageRank is because of that little green bar which says "PageRank" above it (its not surprising that people get confused). I know it provided me with many an evening of head scratching and I'm still getting to grips with the various complexities and opinions!

One thing is for certain though!

PageRank is the fundamental thing which separates G from other SEs. G was the first big search engine to use linking as part of their ranking criteria. Yahoo and MSNs results were created to rely heavily on "on-page" optimisation which could be very easily manipulated but PageRank (at one point) was a lot more reliable.

Also, the good thing about G making links so important is the more sites link to each other, the easier it is for G to navigate the web and update their index.

[kgun]

That you can not see a relation is, as I wrote in another thread, far from the same as there is no relation. Causality is a deeper concept than relationships. The cause is IBL's that shoud be a function of content etc.

I also wrote:

Originally Posted by kgun

I think it is extremely difficult to beat what I will call the adaptive inverted link matrix model.

If there is a SE that beats that alogorithm IMO, it is Google.

Using your eyes and linear correlation analysis are bad tools if you want to uncover / detect causality.

Example:

1. Draw a strict parabola on a sheet of paper.
2. Make a scatterplot around the parabola and remove it.
3. You may not be able to see a relation, and linear correlation / regression analysis will not uncover the non linear function. The correlation will be close to zero, even if there is a strict functional form hidden in the scatter plot.
4. Very many natural phenomena, social interaction etc are non linear.
5. Some people that like to call themself scientists use correlation analysis. A concept that is used to identify linear relations, can not identify an unlinear relationship. The correlation coefficient is such a measure of linear relationships.

[Webnauts]

Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. Google Technology

Is PageRank not important for you?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Is PageRank not important for you?

I have written it before and write it again. What came first, the chicken (TbRank) or the egg (IBL's)? Some will say that the hen (content) came first.

Here in Norway we eat eggs for breakfast and chickens / hens for dinner

Most of us prefer chickens to hens.

[janeth]

The PR does matter but you pass the ranking power of the PR to the anchor text in the link.

Another words if someone links to my page with the anchor text blue widgets and I am selling fish then the blue widget link will help but not as much as it would if it had linked to me with the keyword fish.

[Peter (IMC)]

(Scroll down to my first post).

Interesting, I have to scroll up to see the first post...

[hostelman]

The reason why people want to know about Google Page Rank and why Google is such a hot topic is because anything to do with Google is almost a sure fire success and because Google is the Elephant in the Jungle.

Ranking or not ranking high on Google, can make or break an online Business, unless if you have millions to fund off line, radio, tv and print advertising, to create awareness.

Whether it works or not, if it's anything to do with Google, any online business would want to know.

[hesslei]

The Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. With billions of existing pages and millions of pages generated every day, the search issue in the Web is more complex than you probably think it is. PageRank, only one of hundreds of factors used by Google to determine best search results, helps to keep our search clean and efficient.


=====================
hesslei...


maven

[Webnauts]

First I would like to begin my post here with the common causes of supplemental pages:

1. Pages due to canonicalization problems, e.g duplicated content, too much content similarity;
2. Pages with low or no content;
3. Orphaned web pages. Pages that no one links to, including your own;
4. Error pages, if a site does not use If-Modified-Since, Last Modified and/or Expires rules;
5. Poor website navigation;
6. Loading pages with irrelevant keywords (keyword stuffing);
7. Too low PageRank;
8. Long URLs, especially with long parameters, starting with a question mark (?) and being separated with an ampersand (&) and are not rewriten;
9. Suspicious pages for spamindexing, like non-unique and irrelevant to page content heading tags, meta tags, or linking to bad neighborhoods, etc.

I assume all members here should have heard about the popular PageRank Sculpting. Or?
So, I had this year several customers that had mass of duplicated pages, pages with low or no content, orphaned or error pages, pages with low page rank, etc.

Where were all those pages? Obviously in the supplemental results. After we fixed the pages which still could be fixed and got rid of the garbage pages, they had an incredible boost in their rankings, and that without getting one new single IBL. Also some months later the green color in the PR toolbar increased.

Should that tell me that PR is not important and nothing to care about?
ATTENTION!!!! I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE TOOLBAR!!!

You doubt what I am saying? If you do, I would invite 3 members of WPW I worked with recently and they can tell what happen themselves.

And please no theories that PR sculpting doesn't work please. It works if you do it right. You just cannot estimate in numbers where and how much PR would flow to the pages you are targeting to rank, but you sure can tell to which pages the PR will flow to.

Do you recommend your customers to get IBLs before all above is taken care of? If so, I consider that not professional or fair either!