Toolbar Pagerank: Overhyped?

[mike]

Last week, as Brittany tells us here (http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20040625GoogleUpdateCausesPageRankMania.html), Google updated its Page Rank and backlinks. As I'm sure most of you know, every few weeks Google does a similar update and without fail -as sure as day follows night, the SEO community immediately starts humming with the excited chatter of their shiny new Toolbar Page Rank (henceforth TPR). When I see these updates and the ensuing furor that results from a little green bar moving 1/8th of an inch, four words come to mind: don't believe the hype.

I submit for your discussion, a few issues concerning the nature of the beast:

Such spectacle is made from moving up a point or down a point in the toolbar. However, what are the implications (practically speaking) of going from a 6 to a 7 or a 6 to a 5? The toolbar PR is not the 'real (http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/)' Page Rank number for your site (that's an older link but you get the idea). After all, the basic ranking of 1 to 10 for a site wouldn't really be extremely meaningful when applied to a couple billion sites. Do a search on Google and you won't have to look long to find sites with a low (or none at all) TPR outranking sites with high TPR. So, what really, does that green bar mean to you?

Here at WebProNews for example, we generally hold a 7. In the TPR update prior to this most recent one, we dropped to a 6. Guess what? We're a 7 again now. What changed? Nothing. How were we impacted in the month or so we sat with a 6? Not at all. Minor fluctuations in backlinks here and there (nothing significant) and absolutely no appreciable change to our traffic. Had the 7 gone to a 6, then a 5 and trended down, I'd be a bit more concerned but as long as the numbers that matter to me (referrals, traffic & links) are fine I see little cause for alarm.

Then there are what I call the 'shifters'. Sites will sometimes get caught up in a turbulent toolbar limbo with their PR ranking bouncing all over the place from day to day and even hour to hour in some cases. There's no shortage of head scratching being done about what's happening with these guys. Synching datacenters? Gremlins? Theories abound. You can find discussions about shifters in most SEO forums; it's not an extremely rare phenomenon (here's (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum80/661.htm) one). What can these folks take away from their toolbar rank?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not Google-bashing. I think 99% of the fuss and uproar surrounding the TPR are created and perpetuated by the people that use it far more than the folks at Google. I'm probably not alone in my opinion that it's as much a status symbol as anything. It's business now too; people buy and sell links from sites based on their TPR alone. As a result you're going to have people optimizing for the toolbar ranking as much as they are the search engine I suppose. If there's money to be made with a high TPR alone you can rest assured there will be plenty of folks looking to capitalize - and where does that leave it?

Is the toolbar a means to an end for Google -the proverbial carrot on a stick? Is it just enough of a draw that people will agree to send Google more usage data in exchange for the piece of mind the toolbar brings (enabling our friends at Google to avoid any Alexa-like mishaps (http://news.com.com/Amazon+unit+settles+privacy+lawsuit/2100-1017_3-256663.html)).

Is the toolbar a legitimate tool for measuring your site against your keyword competition?

Is it little more than a novelty item - something you have an offhand look at every now and again - as an indicator of Google doing 'something' when the bar moves?

What do you think?

I watch the bar. I admit it. Thing is, if I drop a number I'm not running around the building breaking the glass on the fire alarms. Then again, I don't have 5 or 6 'link partners' paying me link rental fees either. That example aside, I would tend to think the rank and file webmasters would be far better served focusing on keeping good relevant content on their pages and developing good link networks rather than losing sleep over losing that 1/8th inch on the Google toolbar.

[achronister]

I agree completely. PR will go up naturally with good SEO, so IMO there isn't really any point in worrying about it.

[dentalplans]

I think there are a few factors to getting ranked well: longevity with your site, high PR, and well-optimized index page and sub-pages, with lots of good, unique content, you will outrank most who try to muscle in.

I do think you can take a brand-new site, get it page rank by linking to it from high PR sites and as long as it is well-built and has good seo principles it will start generating traffic pretty quickly. I also have observed that new pages that are added to high PR sites seem to get published in Google quick and rank well right from the start.

[Gary Golden]

To many sites put to much value in PR when they should pay attention to links, search engine saturation and the like, I have seen to many PR6 and PR7 sites that do not have as many links or as high of ranking on keywords that we do, personally I think the GOOGLE PR thing is a little flawed since some sites simply do not have any links and have a PR5, What is up with that!

Concentrate on building a quality site that is properly optimized and the rest will happen.

Good luck to all!

[Peter Holland]

I think the main reason for building websites is beause you like it and it gives pleasure and a high pagerank is just a reward of the work you have put into your websites.

[JacobRusso]

Dear Friends,

I know I live in a total dreamworld... however, my sincere opinion is that Google should be Boycotted worldwide. They have established a near monopoly.

The worst part though, is that they have managed to make 80% of the SEO market go absolutelly bananas - as you can tell from this most fabulous website!

On top of that, they almost subliminally "force" you to download their stupid GoogleBar... which, of course, sets itself up to search through none other than -- yep you guessed it -- Google!

Our websites show up in the top 5 for almost all other search engines. But on Google... we are essentially non-existent and with a PR of 0 and 3 respectivelly. Try a search on MSN or YAHOO for "Document Imaging Miami" or "Document Imaging Weston" or even "Document Imaging Dade County" if you don't believe me.

They are not the best looking websites, nor am I even a decent web designer. But we develop the best and most affordable Document Imaging solutions. Our PC Networks website has been around for 20 years hosted at the same facility so I don't believe longevity has anything to do with rankings.

Google is making fools out of so many people, myself included. You are literally forced to establish backlinks artificially for no aparent reason other than to attempt to float a few notches higher.

At least I admit that I was a fool to spend even as much as 10 minutes attempting to rise on Google. Frankly, I freekin' QUIT! I will spend that time instead on more productive marketing efforts with higher and quicker payback.

Watching a stupid little green bar that STEALS 1/10th of my screen real estate and 1/10th of myday watching and worrying about is absolutelly ridiculous.

So to the rest of you... enjoy watching the stupid little green bar if you wish... GoogleBar is OFF my computer as of NOW! Oh, and Google is NOT a search option for me anymore either. There are more than enough good search engines out there to deal with such a corrupt and stealthy bunch of people.

Please forgive my tone. I don't mean to insult anybody. But I am very angry at how they have manipulated all of us for as long as they have.

On the other hand... I would like to thank ALL OF YOU WebProWorld posters for all of your sincere, unselfish help and guidance to all the rest of us.

You have provided me and so many others with fantastic and most useful comments, suggestions and ideas. I hope I will be able to contribute to this community as I learn more.

Sincerely,
Jacob

[greeneagle]

achronister:
"I agree completely. PR will go up naturally with good SEO, so IMO there isn't really any point in worrying about it."
----
Well put, successful people (including webmasters) spend 20% of their time working on 80% of their primary business issues and 80% of their time on WPW trying to validate their level of acumen, right?

LMAO - Ken

[achronister]

LOL....That sounds about right. Maybe everyone waits for the PR bar to go up so they can tell the boss everything is going as planned....

JacobRusso - What if you were on top of google and nowhere else? Would the other engines then be evil? 80% of the general consumer likes it, so I'd give that the definition of capitalism.

[Will.Spencer]

On top of that, they almost subliminally "force" you to download their stupid GoogleBar... which, of course, sets itself up to search through none other than -- yep you guessed it -- Google!

Jacob:

There are many ways to see PR wthout downloading and installing the Google Toolbar.

Quoting from How do I find the PR (Page Rank) for my site? (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/find-pr-page-rank.shtml):

A great way to see the PR (Page Rank) of multiple pages, and without installing the Google toolbar, is to use the Google Page Rank Report (http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php) at Top25Web.com.

The Prog (http://www.webmasterbrain.com/prog/) and Think Bling (http://www.thinkbling.com/search/) search engines display Google results, but also display the PR of each search result.

An excellent tool for tracking PR and SERPS over a long period of time is the DigitalPoint Keyword Tracker. (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/)

The Future PR lookup (http://www.webmasterbrain.com/upcoming-pagerank-value-checking-tool--tool11.html) tool will check PR on most of the Google datacenters, in an attempt to determine the future PR of a page during
a Google dance.

Other tools to check Google Page Rank include Google Ranking Report (http://www.freelance-help.com/google-ranking-report/page-rank.php) and PageRank Checker (http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/).

[Will.Spencer]

Our PC Networks website has been around for 20 years hosted at the same facility so I don't believe longevity has anything to do with rankings.

That's a neat trick, since line mode browser 1.1 (http://www.w3.org/News/9201.html) was released on 15 January, 1992. ;-)

[Will.Spencer]

What if you were on top of google and nowhere else? Would the other engines then be evil? 80% of the general consumer likes it, so I'd give that the definition of capitalism.

I like Google because it returns the best search results (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/search-engine-best-results.shtml).

I work with (against?) Google because it sends me (and most everyone else) far more traffic than any other search engine.

[Peter (IMC)]

Toolbar PR recently moved down and back up again. It could be simply a matter of changes in scale. The toolbar PR is logarithmical meaning that each point up is a factor X in real pagerank. For instance if X=10 then a PR of 1 means a real pagerank of 10, A PR of 2 means a real pagerank of 100.

Now if X was changed to a higher number, then accross the board Toolbar PR would go down. This has happened. Perhaps in the last update they lowered X again.

In the beginning of the year the pagerank of one of my websites went from 6 down to 4 and that was very noticable in my statistics. Traffic reduced about 30% because of that.

2 point on the scale definitely makes a difference, though I think a PR of 5 is the point where it gets really interesting.

Regards,

Peter

[tdambra]

For a few years my site has had a 5 ranking. As of July 1 it is zero? This happened once before and the following month it went back up to 5!

Something is wrong with their ranking algorithm, and it should be dumped. The idea is to accurately report relevance and popularity, not put businesses at risk and destroy years of hard work.

Their must be accountability. I agree that Google has become a dangerous monopoly. The sooner there is some real competition the better.

[tdambra]

For a few years my site has had a 5 ranking. As of July 1 it is zero? This happened once before and the following month it went back up to 5!

Something is wrong with their ranking algorithm, and it should be dumped. The idea is to accurately report relevance and popularity, not put businesses at risk and destroy years of hard work.

Their must be accountability. I agree that Google has become a dangerous monopoly. The sooner there is some real competition the better.

[racerx]

I'm a little surprised to hear everyone bashing PR on opinions instead of facts. I for one have recently come to believe that it is a huge factor and have evidenced it just last week. We have a client that has 3 separate sites. All of the sites are mirror shopping cart code. The sites were all at a page rank 4. We paid for inbound links from a page rank 8 to two of his sites. Low and behold within 3 weeks we now were at a page rank of 7 on those 2 sites.

According to your article WHO CARES right?

Well we do when hundreds of our products on those 2 sites started getting #1 position on searches by the part numbers. We were beating out even the manufacturers rankings of the products for months.

The bad news.. but evidence for you to chew on..
Due to a comptroller who believed as you do that Page Rank doesn’t matter they stopped with the inbound link. Well last week our page rank returned on the 2 sites to a 4 and we can hardly be found on our product part numbers now.

Keep in mind virtually no changes were made to the sites during this time and there were sites that are linked to the 2 sites (Mine as the web developer) that also experienced the page rank increase from 3 to a 6 when their went up and now it’s back down to a 5 when theirs went down.

Think about it!
RacerX
http://www.remedysoft.com
http://www.remedyhost.com

[joelkatona]

I must admit I do look at the toolbar when I check out potential link partners, but recently I have started to place more weight on the actual link page where our link will be placed and the overall theme of the website.
As far as the weight of the PR on the overall ranking is concerned, it is not as great as many SEOs and the general public believes. I noticed we are starting to reach our limit with on and off page optimization with our PR6 home page when there are over 2-3 million pages competing for the keywords we are targeting.
Most websites can effectively compete with a PR4-5 home page and a razor sharp anchor text strategy for both internal and external links where the competition is below about 1-2 million. Of course there are on page factors that can influence the ranking, but overall the PR is over hyped.

[Arizona Web]

Mike, thank you for that post. Too many people put too much weight in PR. I lost a point according to my toolbar, but I gained a lot of ground on a lot of keywords even after going from a 7 to a 6.

That PR thing is too much hype for sure. It is like looking at your site through beer goggles. Doesn't mean your site is good or ranks well for its intended purpose. It just means more people will try to exchage links with you because they have a different percieved value of your site.

[Will.Spencer]

Those of you who are annoyed at Google Page Rank (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/pr-page-rank.shtml) probably are not going to be happy to hear about Yahoo Web Rank (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/yahoo-webrank.shtml).

:)

[Dave Hawley]

PR, as far as I know, is still a factor in ranking pages in Google. How much of a factor? I don't know.

About the only ones, IMO, that are placing too much emphasis on it, are those that are trying to sell it. Then of course, there are the mugs that buy it.

However, there are also the disillusioned that will spam forums, blogs, FFI sites, guest books etc in the endless pursuit of PR.

[shandy]

Great threat, thanks Mike for bringing that up.
Well, if one things changes when the PR goes up then it's more non-relevant sites asking me for reciprocal links.
The amount ot time I have to waste to scan and delete e-mail requests from casinos and other non-relevant sites. What a waste of time and space in my inbox.

[TrafficProducer]

the basic ranking of 1 to 10 for a site wouldn't really be extremely meaningful when applied to a couple billion sites.

Yep! Too right, (PR is not that helpful), in my view..

If your in the top PR you could be any one in about 5,000,000 ( can't be bother to work this out but you get the idea. )

The basic SEO apply but:-

If I change one full stop in my page will this increase my rank???

I don't think so.

The Tool Bars are more useful for stopping Pop-Ups.

Here some more Tool Bar links:-
http://www.downloads.ukprofessionals.com/anti_pop_up_and_toolbars.html

[sfowler]

You're probably right, but it does give me an indication of whether I am going in the right direction. If the PR is there, then the contnet is there. Maybe I just have to work on getting the right words in there. I suggest you can have PR without good positioning, but not so easy the other way round.

[Yayagogo]

The popularity of PR is because it is a visual tool that one can actually see the results of their efforts. It is a brilliant work of marketing by Google that ties in well with their search business and brand awareness.

How much weight PR has in Google's algorithm to determine a page's search results placement for a certain keyword would be a good topic to discuss/debate.

[electricwind]

I always thought that toolbar ranking thing was like a tachometer in a car. It looks cool on the dash, but it's not crucial information. Further, with Google, it's really more a bell or whistle when compared to CONTENT and focus of a website. For example, our website is about a very specific topic. Why would I be interested in global page rank? I don't want global traffic. I want people interested in the specific subject of our website. Page rank is for those buying and selling it.

[dentalplans]

I think once you achieve a high PR (7-9) you can only hope to keep it (it might disappear or go down). Acquiring new, one-way, links in from high PR sites should, IMO, be pursued pretty vigorously. It doesn't seem that affiliate links do much for your backlinks or PR...High PR looks somewhat impressive, to the easily impressed, but does it necessarily equate into more traffic?? Not sure on that one, although it sure helps your motivation. The truely most relavant and beneficial site should come up number one, but are search engines really that intelligent yet? If they could read content and judge the value of that content to the user I think they would have the right algorithym.

[Will.Spencer]

Why would I be interested in global page rank?

Because global Page Rank (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/pr-page-rank.shtml) is a significant factor in the algorithm which sends you traffic from Google.

An extremely high level view of this formula looks like this:

SERPS = ((On-Site Optimization) + (Anchor Text) + (Page Rank))

To win in competitive SERPS (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/serps.shtml), you have to win in all three categories.

[syc]

Why would I be interested in global page rank?

Because global Page Rank (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/pr-page-rank.shtml) is a significant factor in the algorithm which sends you traffic from Google.

An extremely high level view of this formula looks like this:

SERPS = ((On-Site Optimization) + (Anchor Text) + (Page Rank))

To win in competitive SERPS (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/serps.shtml), you have to win in all three categories.

Spam much? Significant factor in the serps? These days PR is a very small factor.

Look at the competitive terms. The top 5 for the term "Online casino" were all 8's and 7's maybe even a 9. These days all you need is a pr5 or 6 to place top 5 for popular terms.

I suspect it's just just a matter of time before they drop the whole PR factor or make major changes.

[Dave Hawley]

I agree with Will.Spencer. Nobody knows just how much weight PR carries and for this reason it should not be ignored.

I agree that it's more frequent these days to see PR8 pages being outranked by PR5 etc. However, this doesn't really mean too much IMO. Firstly, who knows what PR Google serves up to us via their toolbar? Secondly, these high PR pages would very likley be dropped back x pages in the SERPs if their PR was less.

Even with all this aside, there are at least 3 other good spin-off's from having a high PR.

1) Googlebot visits more frequently.

2) If you have good PR, you likley have lot's of good links pointing to you. This will often bring with it highly targetted traffic.

3) Tomorrow, PR might be the biggest factor in the SEO game.

[cbp]

4) There is also some speculation that the higher PR sites (ie >6 or so) get away with some techniques that lesser PR sites do not (ie borderline spam) - but I not so sure.

CBP

[jawn_tech]

First of all, Mike, props to the new bling-bling. Even more hip since the 'fro last week.

Ok just assuming not everyone knows this tidbit -- PR's -- they are estimates and not integers. That means, don't get excited about about a shift from 6 to 7, because it may just represent a 6.864932 to a 7.000001, or something of that nature. The thing to be concerned or celebrate would be a shift of a couple numbers, but the bottom line is placement. If it affects your lineup in the results for your keywords. People get excited on the basis that it 'could' affect search results -- but save the champaigne until you see if it actually does.

I would have to disagree with Google being a monopoly, as someone said, and believe me, I don't like monopolies either. But people do have a choice with search engines, and pretty much every search engine has their own toolbar. Google may be popular, but not a monopoly.

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