View Full Version : Link hierarchy and page rank
larryweiss
01-22-2004, 09:53 PM
I manage two sites. One is an industrial site, of about 30 Pages, which has been reasonably optimized has a PR5, and is # 1 for its main keywords. The other, PR4, about 75 pages, is an artist’s home site, and keywords are irrelevant, but returns # 1 for the artists name. I experiment with the art site to learn more about SEO before changing the industrial one. The goal has been to get the art site to PR5.
On the PR5 site every single page is linked by html to every other page.
On the PR4 site there is carefully planned hierarchy. My first attempt had most of the pages with only two exits. A script back button and an html link to the home page.
That should have produced a dramatic shift, but it stayed PR4.
My last attempt was to change 11 of the fifteen outbound links on the home page to JavaScript links. It has been about a month since that happened, and its still PR4.
The accumulated knowledge of all of the experts here suggests that the rank should have zoomed, but it didn’t, and it’s frustrating.
Can anyone make any comments or suggestions?
ronniethedodger
01-22-2004, 11:25 PM
My last attempt was to change 11 of the fifteen outbound links on the home page to JavaScript links. It has been about a month since that happened, and its still PR4.
The accumulated knowledge of all of the experts here suggests that the rank should have zoomed, but it didn’t, and it’s frustrating.
Going (or zooming) from a 3 to 4 maybe. But it is a little tougher to go from 4 to 5. The scale is not linear, it is logrithmic.
You could very well be teetering on a 4.9, just shy of a 5....but the googlebar will only register it as 4 because there is does not report tenths.
Further...you are only controlling the outbound flow when you cut those links off. You did nothing to add to the inbound flow, such as acquiring more links from other sites.
BTW, you should change the Home Page URL you have in your DMOZ Profile to include the www. prefix to the domain name. Try to be consistant by always including this on all link exchanges, or be consistant by not including it. Including it is preferable though.
Hi Larry:
There is a great pagerank calculator tool at http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php3 that will show you the relative effects of different internal linking schemes,but in general inbound links from High TPR pages with few outgoing links are going to be of more help than internal linking schemes.
In thinking about the PageRank you see on the Google toolbar it helps to think of the TPR displayed not as a number but as a label for the bin that true PRs of a certain range are put into for display convenience.
Since they are not numbers you cannot use them in caculations or estimates of how many links it will take to rise up to the next bin, but it is estimated that it takes 5 times more links to increase from a toolbar TPR4 to TPR5 then it did from 3 to 4.
larryweiss
01-23-2004, 07:41 AM
Thanks guys. I never expected answere this fast. This is a great place.
My last attempt was to change 11 of the fifteen outbound links on the home page to JavaScript links. It has been about a month since that happened, and its still PR4.
----------------
The net moves soooo slowly. I did change the ODP listing. I did it about six months ago, and I AM THE EDITOR.
I have not tried the calculator because it takes comparatively few pages. Obviously thats a mistake.
-------------------
Back to the topic. What happened when I first made the hierarchy system is that my bottom pages went down 2PR clicks. The Middle Pages went down 1PR click, and the pages that were supposed to go up, stayed the same. I guess that could have taken the home page from a 4.0 to 4.9 but my other site with PR5 and all the interconnected pages has 2 Google inbound links. This site has 8 inbound links.
Actually this site has 100+ inbound, but they are not recognized. Probably because they less than 4PR. The Google backlink number has dropped about 50% over the last few months, while the actual # of inbound links has gone up.
This brings me to the next question. How do you guys get so many inbound links. I bought a copy of Arelis, and set it up as they suggested. A nice intro letter, which says that I have already added their site, which I really have. My commercial site has few highly relevant potential link partners, and they all seem to have no reciprocal links on their sites, and don't seem to care. The art site has tons of potential partners, but few with a PR of 4, and those have huge link pages with hundreds if links. There are also a limited number of directories which offer free links. I have read webmaster site posts for years, and read comments like "I just got 1200 new links". A good day for me is 1 new link.
Thanks for the responses.
Larry
janeth
01-23-2004, 09:33 AM
Hi Larry,
If someone got 1,200 links in one day I would say that was a link farm.
The best way to get links is to write articules and do press releases those you do not have to link back too.
The next best thing is to find good pr sites that you like and ask the web master to exchange links.
From what I understand Yahoo sales links for $299.00 a year. You do not have to link back your one of ten on most of the times a pr4 page I think it is a good deal.
Hi Larry;
While Goolge is spidering and indexing almost contuously the past couple of months, they still seem to update the PR and back links about once a month, and I think it will be another three weeks until the next update.
I really don't worry much abut PR (I know it looks good to visitors but I don't think it helps much in rankings) and have never solicited or asked for a link.
Thats why I still have a PR of 4 on my home page and mostly 3s inside. Somehow over the past few years some 800 sites have decided to link to me but since I never know about these links until I happen to see who's linking to me, I don't know how or why they do.
In general a good internal linking scheme for conservation of PR will not be the best navigation scheme for visitorsm, so you have to blance once against the other and I happen to think that visitors are more important, so I just use a common menu on all pages that links each page to every other page on the site.
janeth
01-23-2004, 10:47 AM
Hi Mel,
The problem is if your trying to get ranked for competitive key words you have to have links, in turn links build up pr
So another words a pr 4 site will never be in the top ten for computers on Google as long as they continue ranking web sites like they do now.
Hi Janeth
Its true that anchor text appears to be important in Google rankings, but a high PR is not a requisite to high rankings, rather it comes along with the links as you mentioned.
I try not to think about PR at all since IMO it may just be put out there in the tool bar to keep us focused on it to the exclusion of the more important parts of the algo.
And you would be surprised what rankings a PR4 site can get.
janeth
01-23-2004, 03:07 PM
Hi Mel,
My point was it want get you words like
computer
Profit
search engine optimization
Do you think you can get ranked for those key words with a pr1, pr2 or pr3 site?
HI Janeth
point taken, but I believe you are confusing cause and effect.
It may be that pages which rank well for such words will have a decent PR but such rankings are not caused by the PR, but because the other things you are doing to get the ranking will bring your PageRank up also as a side effect.
What I do believe is that it is possible to get ranked for effective search terms (BTW none of those terms I would judge effective terms because they are too general) without knowing anything about PageRank or making any deliberate use of Page Rank in your strategy.
I believe that on of the best things anyone concerned about his rankings in google can do is to totally forget that such a thing as PageRank exists and concentrate on aspects which have a much greater efect on rankings.
janeth
01-24-2004, 11:41 AM
Hi Mel,
I do agree with you but my only point being that incoming links effected your page ranking more then anything else and it is also what adds pr to your site.
But I agree pr has nothing to do with ranking but you need pr to rank to around about way.
Sounds kinda of crazy
jackson992
01-24-2004, 06:37 PM
I'm a little confused Janeth. Are you saying links have more weight than on page factors? Because I certainly don't see this as the case. Only my opinion tho LOL
janeth
01-24-2004, 07:10 PM
Hi Jack,
Yes that is the case.
Links carry more weight then anything you can do to your site.
I'm a little confused Janeth. Are you saying links have more weight than on page factors? Because I certainly don't see this as the case. Only my opinion tho LOL
Janeth is right, but with the qualification that Anchor Text links are the biggest factor, not just any old link, such as those you get to boost your TPR but are normally only links to the default URL of your site without any linked keywords.
The oldstandby search
computers
returns pages at the top who do not use the word computers in their page content at all. You can verify this by looking at Googles cached page for apple.com (the #1 search result for computers) where on the google topbar you will see this message:
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: computers
Which tells us that this page got this #1 ranking out of 62,700,000 results without using the keyword in the content, i.e the ranking is based almost entirely on the only place the word appears - in anchor text links, note that the word does not even appear in the page title.
fathom
01-25-2004, 12:38 AM
Yes that is the case.
Links carry more weight then anything you can do to your site.
This isn't entirely accurate.
Links appear to carry more weight because of the "s" on the end and the multiple votes that go with "s" plus the value of relevancy (anchor text/title attribute/alt tag) and the non-linear effect that PageRank has on that "s" (noting more links that point to the link pointing to your page the more you get from each independent link.
In saying all that; try having 1 link to your site -- to see the weighing benefit -- it's not that much at all (unless the vote of course is quite strong/PR wise).
The Title Element is likely the most weighted singular attribute to ranking.
jackson992
01-25-2004, 12:41 AM
ok fathom totally lost me LOL. What does that mean in plain English. And to me having links count more than on page things is stupid. And Google wonders how people spams their search engine.
Look! I got a link so now I can rank #1!
jackson992
01-25-2004, 12:43 AM
Sorry I should add that my above post is not anything against you guys but against the ridiculous search engines who use this faulty logic
minstrel
01-25-2004, 12:46 AM
The oldstandby search - computers -
returns pages at the top who do not use the word computers in their page content at all.... You can verify this by looking at Googles cached page for apple.com (the #1 search result for computers) where on the google topbar you will see this message:
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: computers
Which tells us that this page got this #1 ranking out of 62,700,000 results without using the keyword in the content, i.e the ranking is based almost entirely on the only place the word appears - in anchor text links, note that the word does not even appear in the page title.
Not exactly...
From the html for www.apple.com:
<meta name="Author" content="Apple Computer, Inc.">
<meta name="Keywords" content="Apple Computer">
<option value="http://www.applecomputer.co.kr/">Korea</option>
Copyright © 2004 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.
And (although I don't know whether a spider would see this) in the "Hot News Headlines" section, we see this: "Supercomputing Acientists Adopt Apple Computers and Servers".
Also note that Google displays the information for this site as follows:
Apple
Apple The Apple Store iPod+iTunes .Mac QuickTime Apple Support Mac
OS X. Hot News Switch Hardware Software Made4Mac Education Pro ...
Description: Apple's main homepage.
Category: Computers > Systems > Apple > Macintosh
www.apple.com/ - 18k - Cached - Similar pages
The number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 listings all prominently display the word "computers" or "computer". The number 10 listed site does not but does contain several synonyms for "computer".
By the way, I don't see "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: computers" anywhere on Google's cached page for www.apple.com - what is that?
Hi Minstrel
Are you telling us now that Google reads and ranks the page based partially on Author tags??
Or that the category where this site is indexed in DMOZ somehow counts as page content??
In order to see googles notation that this page only contains the search term in links:
1. Do the search for computers using the Google search engine.
2. You will get back a list of results from that search with apple at the #1 spot at the top of the page.
3. In the last line you will see the linked word cached. Click that link.
4. You will get back a copy of the page that google has in its cache for that site. Superimposed above the top of that is the google bar which identifies this as being the google cache of the page as it was the last time google crawled it.
5. In the last line of that bar you will see this:
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: computers
This is how Google sees it anyway and thats good enough for me. YMMV
<edit> Thanks for pointing out that the search term also occurs in the meta keywords tag, yet Google states that it only appears in links pointing to that page. This to me is a very good indication from Google that they do not consider the keywords tag in their search.
</edit>
Yes that is the case.
Links carry more weight then anything you can do to your site.
This isn't entirely accurate.
Links appear to carry more weight because of the "s" on the end and the multiple votes that go with "s" plus the value of relevancy (anchor text/title attribute/alt tag) and the non-linear effect that PageRank has on that "s" (noting more links that point to the link pointing to your page the more you get from each independent link.
In saying all that; try having 1 link to your site -- to see the weighing benefit -- it's not that much at all (unless the vote of course is quite strong/PR wise).
The Title Element is likely the most weighted singular attribute to ranking.
Uhhhhh.....So do you think that 50 good anchor text links count for less than the page title ranking wise? You can have multiple inbound links but only one title per page.
minstrel
01-25-2004, 10:17 AM
Are you telling us now that Google reads and ranks the page based partially on Author tags?? Or that the category where this site is indexed in DMOZ somehow counts as page content?? This is how Google sees it anyway and thats good enough for me.
<edit> Thanks for pointing out that the search term also occurs in the meta keywords tag, yet Google states that it only appears in links pointing to that page. This to me is a very good indication from Google that they do not consider the keywords tag in their search.</edit>
I'm not saying any of the above - I'm simply pointing out that your post, which stated or implied that the word "computers" could only have come from inbound links to www.apple.com, wasn't entirely correct. Even if you discount ALL tags, look at the bottom of the Apple page and you will see the phrase "Apple Computers" after the copyright notice - I'm sure you're not claiming that Google, whatever their statement on the cached page says, is now ignoring page content too...
Beyond that, Apple is almost a synonym for computers, as is evident in the category listing. I pointed out that the words "computer" and "computers" were prominently displayed on sites listed 2 through 9 but not on site #10 in the Google SERP - in the case of #10, again there were words highly related to "computer".
www.apple.com also has a PR of 10 - I know they have a truckload of inbound links and I am not by any means discounting that as a major factor.
As for the keywords question, we've already been in and around that one - as I said, I encourage you to draw your own conclusions and I'll draw mine, which are obviously different from yours and in my opinion have at least as much actual supporting evidence.
I am not trying to convert you, Mel - however, for the benefit of other people in these forums including newcomers looking for answers to questions that may have significant implications for their websites, I am trying to counter some of your more black-and-white statements by pointing out that they are opinions and there are differing opinions with as much weight on these issues, especially with respect to the keywords meta tag.
After a number of posts in different threads where you stated and/or strongly implied that keyword tags were a waste of time for Google, I see in this post from you (http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=66007#66007) the following:
Just to set my position straight on this issue, I DO NOT think google ignores the meta description tag in its ranking algo, as there are several instances that show otherwise.
I'm happy to see that, not because it agrees with my opinion, but because I think the implication of the statement provides better and more balanced advice to people trying to improve their search engine placements than suggestions that they should delete or not worry about meta tags.
As for the Google note, I do see it if I click on "cached page" from the search results page - interestingly, if you click on apple.com first and then request Google's cached page (which is what I did the first time), it doesn't appear.
....I'm not saying any of the above - I'm simply pointing out that your post, which stated or implied that the word "computers" could only have come from inbound links to www.apple.com, wasn't entirely correct. Even if you discount ALL tags, look at the bottom of the Apple page and you will see the phrase "Apple Computers" after the copyright notice - I'm sure you're not claiming that Google, whatever their statement on the cached page says, is now ignoring page content too...
Minstrel you are putting words in my mouth. I am saying simply that Google says it sees the search term only in links pointing to that page, and that I see no reason to disbelieve what Google says.
I do not think it is too great a leap of faith to surmise that if Google ranks a page highly for a search term when it says it only sees that term in links pointing to that page then that ranking must have something to do those links. It can't be due to page content because google says it does not see the term there; it can't be due to the page title because the term doesn't appear there. The term does appear in the keywords tag, but Google says it sees it only in links pointing to the page. Intrepret that as you will.
This topic has been discussed widely on many SEO forums, and in general the concensus that was reached (after many experiments to verify results) was that anchor text is a powerful part of the Google ranking algo. I have conducted exeriments where we changed nothing on a page but added keyword anchor text links to a page and the rankings increased dramatically. There is one such experement ongoing to increase the ranking of a particular SEO forum for that term by the use of only anchor text links. I believe that, based on what has been done before, that it will again provide evidence to prove the concept.
I also note that for whatever reason Google has not highlighted computers in the copyright section of the page for whatever reason.
These are not assumptions on my part they are simple facts but I do think that some logical assumptions can be drawn from them and that by studying what Google says and does we can gain a better understanding of Google's workings.
Beyond that, Apple is almost a synonym for computers, as is evident in the category listing. I pointed out that the words "computer" and "computers" were prominently displayed on sites listed 2 through 9 but not on site #10 in the Google SERP - in the case of #10, again there were words highly related to "computer".
I really hope you are not suggesting that synonyms are a part of the Google ranking algo, unless you have some observations to support such thinking?
As for the word computers being prominently displayedon sites 2 thru 10 lets examine the number 2 listing Dell a bit more carefully than just a casual examination of the SERPs shall we?
First off lets go from the search to the cached page where again you will see the now familiar term:
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: computers
and sure enough we don't see the term computers visible on that page. Where then did the snippet and description in the SERP come from?
As you know (and therefor, I suppose, assumed that is where it came from) Google normally takes the snippet from the text surrounding the search term on the page, but in this case the search term does not appear on the page and so Google has gone to the meta description for the snippet, and then has appended the description from the Google directory listing. I leave it to you to verify that this is the case.
Again we have a page where Google says it only sees the search term in links pointing to the page. To me if thats all they see, and they rank the page highly for the term there is likely to be some connection. You are of course free to draw you own conclusions, but the conclusion that the search term computers is prominently displayed on the Dell site is not correct.
www.apple.com also has a PR of 10 - I know they have a truckload of inbound links and I am not by any means discounting that as a major factor.
Exactly Minstrel, thats what I have been saying - they have a load of inbound links and that is where most of the ranking is coming from. The PR probably does help too.
I am not trying to convert you, Mel - however, for the benefit of other people in these forums including newcomers looking for answers to questions that may have significant implications for their websites, I am trying to counter some of your more black-and-white statements by pointing out that they are opinions and there are differing opinions with as much weight on these issues, especially with respect to the keywords meta tag.
Yes they are opinions but opinions supported by facts resoning and logic. I welcome debate but I prefer that it is supported with a few facts if possible for exactly that reason.
After a number of posts in different threads where you stated and/or strongly implied that keyword tags were a waste of time for Google, I see in this post from you (http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=66007#66007) the following:
Just to set my position straight on this issue, I DO NOT think google ignores the meta description tag in its ranking algo, as there are several
I'm happy to see that, not because it agrees with my opinion, but because I think the implication of the statement provides better and more balanced advice to people trying to improve their search engine placements than suggestions that they should delete or not worry about meta tags.instances that show otherwise.
This is nothing new Minstrel its just that somehow when I say I do not think the keywords tag is of much use in Google, you seem to assume that I include all meta tags and all search engines in that statement, which I do not and have not, hence the need to set the record straight.
As for the Google note, I do see it if I click on "cached page" from the search results page - interestingly, if you click on apple.com first and then request Google's cached page (which is what I did the first time), it doesn't appear.
This is perhaps the most important point in the entire discussion. This is one of the few places where google give us a glimmer of an insight into their workings.
Why do you think Google said that they only see the term in links pointing to the page if, as you seem to suppose, that is not the case?
PhilC
01-26-2004, 08:59 AM
In response to larryweiss' question, 75 pages is not enough to channel PR around the site so that 1 page ends up with PR5, unless there is sufficient PR in the site to start with. To get sufficient PR into the site, you need links from other sites.
Example: I had a site with PR4 on the front for quite a long time. I added around 1500 pages (all spidered and indexed), and it moved to PR5. Then I added 20 odd thousand pages (all spidered and indexed), but it didn't get the front page to PR6. I should say that all the additional pages were linked within the site to favor the front page. Each additional page increases the PR within the site, but not by very much. 75 pages isn't very many.
Minstrel and Mel:
Link text has always been in charge with Google. On-page factors have always taken a backseat to link text. That is not to say that 1 link text will outweigh a page's Title text all by itself, but multiple link texts will. Mel is correct.
janeth
01-26-2004, 09:42 AM
I have always said that a link with your key word in the link was like having that word on your site.
The thing that makes links strong is the fact that you can get so many where it is hard to use the same key word 1,000 times on a page it is not that hard to get 1,000 links.
I have said this over and over in post before.
minstrel
01-26-2004, 10:03 AM
Minstrel and Mel:
Link text has always been in charge with Google. On-page factors have always taken a backseat to link text. That is not to say that 1 link text will outweigh a page's Title text all by itself, but multiple link texts will. Mel is correct.
Please re-read my posts. I have NEVER said, nor do I believe, that Google does not weight incoming links more heavily than other factors - that in fact is and always has been at the very root of their search engine strategy.
What I HAVE said repeatedly, ever since I joined WebProWorld, is that the conclusion that Google ignores meta tags is based on opinion rather than substantive evidence, and that I don't believe it - I have NEVER said I believe it is a major factor, or outweighs backlinks - what I HAVE said is that in my opinion tags make a small but non-zero contribution to ranking. My intent is to counter what I think is bad advice from various members to other members here to drop meta tags, stop worrying about certain other on-page factors, and focus their energies on backlinks.
PhilC
01-26-2004, 10:43 AM
I have always said that a link with your key word in the link was like having that word on your site.
That's right. Google stated at the start that they attribute link text to the target page - as though the text were on the page. Experience has shown that, not only is the text counted as being on the page, but it is weighed more heavily than most (maybe all) of the other text on the page.
I agree with you, Minstrel, that meta tags should always be included, and never dropped, because other engines make use of them for rankings even if Google doesn't.
janeth
01-26-2004, 11:59 AM
Hi PhilC
I just went to your web site. I know who you are now. It is great to have you here. I have spent a lot of time reading and learning from your site.
PhilC
01-26-2004, 12:02 PM
Aaw gee.... where's the blush icon?
janeth
01-26-2004, 12:06 PM
I have a question for the famous PhilC or anyone else
We droped from pr6 to pr5 today all the links look to be about the same.
When I started looking into it I have herd a lot of other people saying they have also droped have you herd anything on this?
PhilC
01-26-2004, 12:27 PM
Famous??? Infamous, more like :)
Toolbar PR has a natural tendancy to drop. When Google add more pages to the index, the boundaries between the PR sections change, and pages that are close to the lower limit of a section will move down to the higher limit of the section below. That's a natural occurence as the index swells.
I haven't yet heard of any all-round PR drops, but it can often happen for losing just one IBL from a decent PR page. Also, some of the linking pages may have lost IBLs, and their PageRank (not Toolbar PR) can have dropped. Either way, the PageRank (not the Toolbar PR label) may not have changed very much.
In recent weeks I've come across significant Toolbar PR drops without affecting the rankings. It may all be to do with Google's continuing major algo shift. It may also be to do with Google not completing the PR calculations in one sitting - I always thought that that happened.
minstrel
01-26-2004, 12:30 PM
Hmmm.... you're not going to hear any complaints from me -- after months at PR4 my site is PR5 today!!
:o)
rocky1
01-26-2004, 01:58 PM
I have a question for the famous PhilC or anyone else
We droped from pr6 to pr5 today all the links look to be about the same.
When I started looking into it I have herd a lot of other people saying they have also droped have you herd anything on this?
Hi Janeth,
Design side of my site dropped from PR 5 to PR 4 in this shift also. Otherwise haven't seen any difference.
jackson992
01-26-2004, 02:27 PM
God I hate Google!
Everytime someone says link text from other sites is more important than the page itself I want to hurl
Good to see you hear Phil!
Minstrel and Mel:
Link text has always been in charge with Google. On-page factors have always taken a backseat to link text. That is not to say that 1 link text will outweigh a page's Title text all by itself, but multiple link texts will. Mel is correct.
Please re-read my posts. I have NEVER said, nor do I believe, that Google does not weight incoming links more heavily than other factors - that in fact is and always has been at the very root of their search engine strategy.
What I HAVE said repeatedly, ever since I joined WebProWorld, is that the conclusion that Google ignores meta tags is based on opinion rather than substantive evidence, and that I don't believe it - I have NEVER said I believe it is a major factor, or outweighs backlinks - what I HAVE said is that in my opinion tags make a small but non-zero contribution to ranking. My intent is to counter what I think is bad advice from various members to other members here to drop meta tags, stop worrying about certain other on-page factors, and focus their energies on backlinks.
There are two distinct types of Links Minstrel plain links using only the URL and text or anchor text links which use a linked word. They have very different weightings in the Google algo with anchor text in particular having a much more profound effect on rankings. Thus just discussing links in generic terms is not very productive.
No one (certainly not me at least) has advocated the dropping of meta tags, but I have said that I believe the keywords meta tag is of no effect in Google, but that you should still include it for other engines who do use it.
You are somewhat correct in saying that I advocate emphasizing anchor text links if you want to rank well with Google, and in particular text links from expert sites.
This does not mean that I advocate no text on the page or no page titles or not bothering to use good navigation or making your site useful to your users, just the simple idea that if you want to rank well anchor text should be a major part of your strategy and have demonstrated that pages can rank very well using such a strategy.
If you think this is bad advice that is your perogative.
Like wise there are more than one type of meta tags so you cannot just discuss meta tags as though they were all the same. I have spelled it out clearly that I believe that Google does use the meta description tag (and have have shown examples of that use) and that I don't believe they use the meta keywords tag in thier ranking algo, and that this concept is supported by people like Danny Sullivan.
I am in the process of running a test to demonstrate these facts regarding meta tags, and will post the results as soon as Google spiders and indexes the page.
This IMO is the only way to insure that viewers get correct information as opposed to conjecture.
God I hate Google!
Everytime someone says link text from other sites is more important than the page itself I want to hurl
Good to see you hear Phil!
I hear you Jack, and I hate speed limits and fines for speeding, too, but they are a fact of modern life.
If everyone drove at resonable speeds there would be no need for speed limits and fines, and if everyone wrote honest page copy which only described factually and accurately the concept or product they were advocating there would probably be no need for PageRank or Anchor text as a ranking factor.
I have a question for the famous PhilC or anyone else
We droped from pr6 to pr5 today all the links look to be about the same.
When I started looking into it I have herd a lot of other people saying they have also droped have you herd anything on this?
Hi Janeth,
Design side of my site dropped from PR 5 to PR 4 in this shift also. Otherwise haven't seen any difference.
Hi Rocky
One of my sites dropped a TPR point also but the rankings increased.
I have seen other drops in the past years and believe it maybe an adjustment of what real PR values are crammed into what box in the Google toolbar. It does not necessarily mean that your actual PR (the one google uses for calculations) has dropped though.
minstrel
01-26-2004, 09:19 PM
Mel:
I would respectfully request that you read my posts more carefully before you start replying to them. You have an irritating habit of interpreting what I say in a way which creates something for you to argue against, when it wasn't what I said in the first place. Add to that your penchant for re-interpreting your own statements as a discussion progresses and it makes trying to engage in a reasonable conversation rather frustrating, to say the least.
janeth
01-26-2004, 09:43 PM
Hi Minstrel and Mel,
I'm still working on my pr drop and was just wondering what is Minstrels and Mels pr and did you guys drop any?
Mel:
I would respectfully request that you read my posts more carefully before you start replying to them. You have an irritating habit of interpreting what I say in a way which creates something for you to argue against, when it wasn't what I said in the first place. Add to that your penchant for re-interpreting your own statements as a discussion progresses and it makes trying to engage in a reasonable conversation rather frustrating, to say the least.
Not quite sure what you are trying to say Minstel, but I do agree that I have never had such a frustrating conversation before.
Hi Minstrel and Mel,
I'm still working on my pr drop and was just wondering what is Minstrels and Mels pr and did you guys drop any?
Hi Janeth
My Toolbar PR dropped a point, but my rankings are increasing.
minstrel
01-26-2004, 10:58 PM
I'm happy to say that my PR increased to 5. I'm now in the #1 or #2 positions for all major key phrases and in the top 5 or 6 for most minor ones.
janeth
01-26-2004, 11:29 PM
So everyone did not go down I guess just me?
You said your a pr5 Minstrel that is great I'm on Linux right now and can not see the pr but this morning I found out we went from pr6 to pr5.
What is your pr Mel? and did you say you also dropped?
April98
01-27-2004, 10:25 PM
My toolbar PR dropped to a 4 for my homepage and a 3 for all of my other pages. It greatly affected my rankings on almost all of my key words. I'm wiped completely off the map for "western gift baskets" and I think I was at #3 last week!!!
jackson992
01-27-2004, 11:11 PM
Just today my sites fell one PR point. One site is PR 2! I have not changed any of my links so how could this happen??
Hi Jack
You have to remember that the PR you see in the toolbar is NOT the PR google uses in ranking calculations nor is it True PR.
TPR (Tool Bar PageRank) is just a graphic representation of what your actual page rank is, which for ease of reading assigns a range of PR values to a box and then labels that box on the tool bar with a numbered tag. Google can and does vary what ranges go in what boxes from time to time, and that together with links being added and dropped can result in changes into which box your PR falls,
This does not mean that you have fewer links or that your real PR has changed. If your rankings are not dropping don't worry about it.
My site fell into a lower box today, but my rankings increased.
Sometimes I think Google gave us green bar so that we would have something to fixate on, instead of worrying about other more important SEO aspects.
Nice of Google to update at this time as it provides us with a great example of the power of anchor text links.
Search for seo forum. The #1 ranking there was put up from #10 in two weeks with anchor text.
But don't believe me, the details are available at the #1 ranking site.
minstrel
01-28-2004, 10:51 AM
It is true that PageRank is not equivalent to ranking in a search result - it is one factor in seterminind how you will place in the search results and it is a significant factor but it is only one of several.
On the other hand, when one talks about "rankings dropping" or "rankings increasing", that in itself is meaningless unless you also pay attention to the question "dropping/increasing for what search words or phrases?".
If you drop for your favorite keyword, have a look at variations on that word or phrase - add a relevant word to the phrase (maybe location, or a descriptor/qualifier, but make it something people might actually use in a search phrase) - how does that change where you rank in the search listing?
It may well be that if you can find meaningful variations on your search terms and work at optimizing for those variations, you may improve not only your search engine ranking but also your "click-through" rate.
janeth
01-28-2004, 11:16 AM
1. If you do a search for SEO forum that forum is on a pr7 site that belongs to PhilC above. The reason it ranks so good is because it is on Phil C's site that has a home page pr of 7. The reason I know his pr is 7 is because the Google tool bar says it is.
The Google tool bar is not the best in the world and it goes down a lot and can mess up a lot but for the most part it is a great tool.
Just about everyone i know uses it to get an idea of a sites pr.
Which is a good thing to know. It is good to know if your going to hire and SEO knowing what his pr is ahead of time is good to know or if your going to buy something on-line if it is a pr8 site you know they have been around for awhile and are serious about there business.
A pr0 could be a brand new site and you would want to look into it before you do business with them.
If your trading links knowing the pr plays a big part when it comes to trading links.
well PhilC thinks it ranks so well because of the inbound anchor text links that were recently added as a test to see if they would raise the rankings, and I have to agree.
Again cause and effect - the inbound links raised both the PR and the rankings, but that does not mean that rankings are a result of the sites PR.It was PR7 before the links were added and it ranked #7.
IMO the toolbar actually is a detriment to good ranking as it tends to cause people to fixate on PR instead of the other things that can affect your ranking more strongly. Nothing wrong with PR but it is not the Prime factor in sites ranking well.
If it were only a question of high PR then high PR sites would rank well on all search terms which they clearly do not.
Judging any site by its PR is like judging a beauty contest by the contestants numbers, there are other things that count more.
If you are trading links only to increase your PR and not your traffic or relevancy then PR is important, but if you are trading links only to boost your PR are you doing it for the right reasons?
janeth
01-28-2004, 07:29 PM
Hi Mel I only trade links to boost traffic for no other reason I do try to make sure I get my key words in my links but some people still have a hard time with that.
mentor4u
01-31-2004, 12:57 AM
Hello Everyone
As you can see i am new to this forum.
I agree with Janeth that links are good
for page rank and moving up on Google
Last November i started linking with tightly
themed sites. I moved up to a PR3 right before the
Florida update and after this last one I moved up
to a PR5.
I will continue now to get more links from PR6 and PR5 sites to continue and grow this PR5 rating.
Also my logs are showing that most of the traffic is coming from these links than the search engines.
Yes i think they are valuable and i dont have to worry about the PMS of Google
larryweiss
07-13-2004, 08:33 PM
I guess this threads about done.
Thanks again.