If No. 1 in search, how come P.R. of 6?

[Dustie]

Hi,

I have a question. A couple of my sites are number one in the search engine for their keywords, and yet they have a page rank of 6. One of the sites is Welcome to Real Estate Clipart.com, graphics and clipart for the online Real Estate Community (http://www.realestateclipart.com) and is number one in a search for Real Estate Clipart or Real Estate Graphics and yet is has a page rank of 6. Same goes for BeautifulBellaVista.com. Number one in a search of Bella Vista, Arkansas and a number of other Bella Vista searches and it's page rank is 6.

Another site, Internet Clipart.Com - Free Professional Graphics for YOUR personal or professional website. (http://www.internetclipart.com), is number one in a search of fishing clipart,

I thought Google used page rank to bring back the most relevent sites in a search. If that's the case, shouldn't sites with a higher page rank then mine show up number one, or shouldn't my sites, being number one, have a higher page rank? I've always been confused on page rank anyway..and this doesn't help any. There's no way to get any higher then number one in the search engines..so how do I get a higher page rank?

Dustie

[wige]

Page rank is generally considered worthless as an SEO factor, because all that pagerank measures is backlinks; your pagerank is a relative indication of how many links your site has, weighted based on the page rank of the pages linking to you, which in turn is based on the page rank of the pages linking to them and so on. This gives no indication whatsoever of how relevant Google will find your site for a specific search query, although it is a factor.

[ctabuk]

Wige is spot on - the real reason that you are riding high is because you have a vast number of Relevant inbound links. Google has bypassed your tags, back in the days when keyword tags were considered important - you survived without them:) - Keep the linking process as it is - I think you are getting natural links. Coooool

[ashukairy]

Page rank of six is pretty good btw! It's not the best, but a lot of major sites rank way lower. You're doing something right! :)

[thegypsy]

Page rank is generally considered worthless as an SEO factor, because all that pagerank measures is backlinks; your pagerank is a relative indication of how many links your site has, weighted based on the page rank of the pages linking to you, which in turn is based on the page rank of the pages linking to them and so on. This gives no indication whatsoever of how relevant Google will find your site for a specific search query, although it is a factor.

whaaaaaaaa??? PR = Backlinks --- so then Backlinks = worthless??

That's a little harsh no? Last I heard BLs were important for ranking no??

PageRank is alive and well folks.. ( tho TBPR is pretty useless) - what has happened since 2004 is that PR is no longer a ONLY major factor in ranking. Other factors have been added to the over-all indexing and retrieval process in addition to PR..... so simply knowing a TBPR won't tell U the whole story. Actually Google recently updated the old PageRank patent (http://www.huomah.com/search-engines/algorithm-matters/tale-of-the-two-pagerank-patents.html) .. I doubt they did that cause it is 'worthless'

Stating that "Page rank is generally considered worthless as an SEO factor" - shows a wee bit of ignorance to how ranking mechanisms work.....

Stop building backlinks and see how well U rank.... bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha......

[ashukairy]

Yeah, like I said Dustie, you're doing something right to get a page rank of 6. A lot of SEO companies out there don't even have that high of a page rank!! And like thegypsy said, backlinks are preetttty important.

[wige]

whaaaaaaaa??? PR = Backlinks --- so then Backlinks = worthless??

That's a little harsh no? Last I heard BLs were important for ranking no??
Not what I am saying at all. As far as Google is concerned, backlinks are one of the most important factors. What I am saying is that the toolbar PR is only a measure of empirical backlinks, weighted recursively based on the pagerank of pages linking to the linking pages and so on. As a matter of determining where you will rank, toolbar PR is irrelevant because it contains no contextual information, and thus is no indication of how relevant Google will find the page for a specific query.


( tho TBPR is pretty useless) - what has happened since 2004 is that PR is no longer a ONLY major factor in ranking. Other factors have been added to the over-all indexing and retrieval process in addition to PR..... so simply knowing a TBPR won't tell U the whole story.
Thats what I said.


Stating that "Page rank is generally considered worthless as an SEO factor" - shows a wee bit of ignorance to how ranking mechanisms work.....

Stop building backlinks and see how well U rank.... bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha......
But it is worthless - we aren't talking about "internal pagerank" we are talking about this page's pagerank of 6, which is the toolbar pagerank, which is out of date, and carries no relevance information - it is worthless. In fact, I would go so far as to say (read this twice before flaming) internal pagerank only influences SERP positions, as a minor wieghting factor to balance out other factors used to determine relevance. In other words, Google looks at link text, text near the link, on page elements, etc to determine the most relevant pages, and then uses the internal pagerank to "temper" that data and try further sort the results (already sorted by relevance) by popularity. This can shift items around in the SERPs, but if you had access to this internal pagerank, it still can't tell you how you will rank in a specific search because again, it is only a measure of the relative link popularity of the page.

[thegypsy]

Well I am pretty sure I knew what you were saying.. I have ranted about TBPR for quite some time..... Slashdot | The Google Toolbar PageRank Demystified (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/24/1358204)

I just wanted to clear up the presentation of what was said..

TBPR is a useless metric.... ACTUAL PR is still alive and well and a major factor in the ranking process. There are simply other factors considered.

If ya want we're rambling about relevance in this thread http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/62865-can-you-combine-writing-naturally-search-engine-optimization-copywriting.html .... relating to stuff like 'Phrase Based indexing and retrieval' and 'Method and apparatus for learning a probabilistic generative model for text'

... fun stuff if yer into the technical side of things.....

Oh, and for the record? I don't FLAME.... I RANT.... he he

[mjtaylor]

whaaaaaaaa??? PR = Backlinks --- so then Backlinks = worthless??

That's a little harsh no? Last I heard BLs were important for ranking no??

PageRank is alive and well folks.. ( tho TBPR is pretty useless) - what has happened since 2004 is that PR is no longer a ONLY major factor in ranking. Other factors have been added to the over-all indexing and retrieval process in addition to PR..... so simply knowing a TBPR won't tell U the whole story. Actually Google recently updated the old PageRank patent (http://www.huomah.com/search-engines/algorithm-matters/tale-of-the-two-pagerank-patents.html) .. I doubt they did that cause it is 'worthless'

Stating that "Page rank is generally considered worthless as an SEO factor" - shows a wee bit of ignorance to how ranking mechanisms work.....

Stop building backlinks and see how well U rank.... bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha......

Let's see: a PR of 8 or 9 is not going to get you ranked for anything unless the backlinks are relevant to the search term, so the PR is worth nothing unless the backlinks are relevant. So, it is the anchor text and the context of the backlink that actually is useful for SEO.

Now, on the other hand, a relevant backlink from a PR3 page with 10 outbound links is worth less, SEOw-ise, than an equally relevant link from a PR4 site with 10 outbound links so from that perspective PR is worth something, but on its own, PR *is* useless. It's the context that makes it of value and *not* the PR in and of itself.

Cheers, MJ

[thegypsy]

actually.... aggregate backlinks.. tightly related or not, will still get U ranked over lesser pages. Relevance is simply ONE factor... the model hasn't shifted that much yet.

Once again PR=backlinks and backlinks still carry heavy weighting. The relevance somes into play where further refinement of the returned results is based from relatively equal pages.

You were talking about a page here ranking for a given phrase ( in the other post) is that because there are a ton of backlinks to that page with that phrase as link text?? Or maybe because of the aggregate of BLs to this site?

... relevant BLs are the cat's ass.... but aggregate BLs are important as well....

BTW - I have agreed with what you are saying in essence -- in the other thread... I think you are simply putting too much respect into how much value the relevance has in the existing ranking mechanisms

[wige]

Lets say there are two pages, a product page on my competitor's site about blue widgets with a pagerank of 9 and 500 inbound links, all using variations of "blue widget(s)" in the link text and surrounding paragraphs. My site has a pagerank 2 page with 10 inbound links all using variations of "green widget(s)" in the link text and surrounding text. Whose page would show up in the results first for a query on "green widget"? How can a search engine have pagerank trump relevance and still provide useful, quality results? My understanding of the page rank concept was to determine what sites were viewed by the Internet community as authorities - the first step is to determine the most relevant pages, then the most authoritative of those relevant pages. If you are only "somewhat relevant" (sure, the page talks about widgets, but they are the wrong color), all the authority in the world will only boost you so much.

[thegypsy]

Lets say there are two pages, a product page on my competitor's site about blue widgets with a pagerank of 9 and 500 inbound links, all using variations of "blue widget(s)" in the link text and surrounding paragraphs.

My site has a pagerank 2 page with 10 inbound links all using variations of "green widget(s)" in the link text and surrounding text. Whose page would show up in the results first for a query on "green widget"? How can a search engine have pagerank trump relevance and still provide useful, quality results?

My understanding of the page rank concept was to determine what sites were viewed by the Internet community as authorities - the first step is to determine the most relevant pages, then the most authoritative of those relevant pages. If you are only "somewhat relevant" (sure, the page talks about widgets, but they are the wrong color), all the authority in the world will only boost you so much.

...but if the PR9 site had a page about 'green widgets' with no targeted BLs ... and your PR2 page about 'green widgets' had 10 targeted.... they win....

That is what I mean about the aggegate. An authority site with massive BLs to the home page can outrank a targeted page of yours because of the site aggegate of BLs.... regardless if they are targeted or not..... though it depends on the competitiveness of the term... but that's generally how life goes at this point.

Tightening of relevance via things cranky and I were on about in the other thread may change that... which is fine by me

[mjtaylor]

Let's say a site is not about widgets at all and has no backlinks about widgets but does have a few thousand great links and a PR9 ... will it rank for widgets? Nope, but it sure has great PR.

Relevance is the SEO factor that determines whether a page ranks.

Now if that same site had a page about widgets, but no backlinks relevant to widgets, then yes, it could get a good position for widgets. But it would have to have relevant content.

[thegypsy]

uh huh... do U all argue semantics alot around here ( post with Minstrel the other day)

I am pretty sure we all are along the same lines here.... It is not a competition.. if it is... Great U win... I am wrong.

I was simply trying to state the facts as I know them.. carry on

I shall go back to my hole now.... cya

[mjtaylor]

uh huh... do U all argue semantics alot around here ( post with Minstrel the other day)

I am pretty sure we all are along the same lines here.... It is not a competition.. if it is... Great U win... I am wrong.

I was simply trying to state the facts as I know them.. carry on

I shall go back to my hole now.... cya

If these were matters of fact, we could all read the book. But in SEO very little is absolutely known, and much changes, so there's lots of opining, often ad nauseum. However, I will say, in relationship to quite a few other forums and blogs where I've lurked, this one is fairly flame free.

MJ

[Dustie]

Wow...way deep! Thanks guys, I think. Not sure I got the answer but Ash says I'm doing something right and CTAbuk says looks like I'm getting Natural links, so I'll take those as good news and not worry so much about how to understand page rank, at least as long as my site is no. 1 in Google with the search terms it needs for traffic.

[dartman]

Wow...way deep! Thanks guys, I think. Not sure I got the answer but Ash says I'm doing something right and CTAbuk says looks like I'm getting Natural links, so I'll take those as good news and not worry so much about how to understand page rank, at least as long as my site is no. 1 in Google with the search terms it needs for traffic.

What you've done has good results. Just keep doing whatever it is you're doing
and don't get too wrapped up in technicalities.

[ashukairy]

hehe, I guess the thread got pretty heated, huh dustie? :)

[thegypsy]

If by 'heated' you mean the passion that is between MJ and I.. then certainly.. We are running away to the South Seas very soon.... We'll send postcards.....

Tee hee.. She's my - http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/engel/angel-smiley-027.gif

[ctabuk]

I have decided to stick my beak in here.

TBPR is totally and utterly useless in connection with SEO

There I've said it - the guy who does a little SEO and is predominately SEM.

Why is it totally useless?

Well no one has ever actually proven that a site showing a PR8 was actually really and truly a PR8 4 months ago.

Secondly - I don't actually care if any of my sites have good PR anyway -not a jot - not even a 'oh it's a PR3' woe is me.

Money, Money, Money - that's my PageRank

Question for all of you SEO guys

How many of you sell your services based on the Toolbar Pagerank?

How many of you base your future predictions of SERP based on it?

If the phones don't ring with new enquiries or if the e-mails stop saying
'We found your site on Google' - well does that matter whether the site has TBPR or not??

No it does not - period - there is no other alternative argument -if the site is not making money - then you need to look at basic SEO - no question there, but let the greenbacks be your mantra not a greenline.

I just made that up!! But there again -I'm SEM:D:D:D

There are technical debates in abundance

How many links should I have? No follows - re directs -Html vs Xhtml etc etc - Now that I do leave with the SEO guys and gals

[thegypsy]

Well David, I was ranting about it's lack of value as a metric a year ago and even somehow found my way onto SlashDot - (put link earlier in this thread)

So yer preaching to the choir over hear.... and with the more agressive stand on paid links and the fact that it is the core metric for valuations in that industry, I can't see it (TBPR) having much of a future....

... I for one would be happy to see the TBPR go so folks wouldn't keep making posts like "Whens the PR update" or "How do I increase my PR" bla bla bla

[ctabuk]

And there was me thinking 'Let Greenbacks be your Mantra and not the Toolbar Greenline' was about to make me a fortune in tee shirt sales here at WPW - I had the URL lined up - and a nice 'spammy sig' -Oh hummmm

Back to the drawing board.;)

[thegypsy]

How about.....

' Watch the bottom line - not the green one '

[ctabuk]

Or just look at the new top forum question in Google section - guess what it is??

[thegypsy]

nnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooo

http://smiliesftw.com/x/diediedie.gif

[astro]

I have decided to stick my beak in here.

TBPR is totally and utterly useless in connection with SEO ............


.......Question for all of you SEO guys

How many of you sell your services based on the Toolbar Pagerank?

How many of you base your future predictions of SERP based on it?

If the phones don't ring with new enquiries or if the e-mails stop saying
'We found your site on Google' - well does that matter whether the site has TBPR or not??



Whoopie! A bit of the old common.

Of course you could always use the old fashioned method of getting into the search engines..............Relevant Content and lots of it!

What price SEO services then? Personally I have spent more time posting on this board this year than on SEO. A while back this board was obsessed with the google sandbox. I launched a new site 2 weeks ago and it is No's 4 & 5 for it's keywords already. No SEO services, and sin of sins....no back links from high PR sites or indeed any sites........just content.

Strikes me Google has spawned an entire industry earning money for precious little in return.

</Astro>

[Clarrie]

Wow...way deep! Thanks guys, I think. Not sure I got the answer but Ash says I'm doing something right and CTAbuk says looks like I'm getting Natural links, so I'll take those as good news and not worry so much about how to understand page rank, at least as long as my site is no. 1 in Google with the search terms it needs for traffic.

Links (and thus PageRank) are important, but so is relevance. Pages don't have to have high page rank to rank well. I have many pages that rank in the top 5 for important terms but only register 2 in the PRTB. Equally I have pages with PR5 that are nowhere to be seen :-).

[colincartwright]

You seem disapointed that you ONLY have a PR of 6? Why, its one of the highest PR's I've seen for sites like yours. If you look on the net, you'll find very, very few sites have a PR of 6, let alone higher. I think you are doing an outstanding job. PR is no ral indication in any case of the level of relevance of your site in search results, so don't worry

[ctabuk]

From Lincolnshire - my word - the word has spread there too:D

[mjtaylor]

If by 'heated' you mean the passion that is between MJ and I.. then certainly.. We are running away to the South Seas very soon.... We'll send postcards.....

Tee hee.. She's my - http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/engel/angel-smiley-027.gif

Just wanted you to know your little angel has not been avoiding you ... just busy packing and moving ... closer to you ... wherever you are ...
and I found the right spot in the South Pacific ...

[bart0r]

as mentioned above, a PR6 site is obviously doing well in terms of IBLs.

I Havent been on your site, but to have a PR6 i would say your continually updating your site with fresh content and thus keeping a buzz out there for people to talk about and link to.

I would love to get a higher PR than 3, but the businesses im working for dont ever change products, only offer the same services and thus the website doesnt update too often. Its probably very difficult for me to get legitimate page ranking.
Although im ranking first for all of my search terms a higher PR would just be another ticked box for me :)


/pat

[mjtaylor]

as mentioned above, a PR6 site is obviously doing well in terms of IBLs.

I Havent been on your site, but to have a PR6 i would say your continually updating your site with fresh content and thus keeping a buzz out there for people to talk about and link to.

I would love to get a higher PR than 3, but the businesses im working for dont ever change products, only offer the same services and thus the website doesnt update too often. Its probably very difficult for me to get legitimate page ranking.
Although im ranking first for all of my search terms a higher PR would just be another ticked box for me :)


/pat

So, if there is no new content to add, how do you think the other sites get better ranking than yours? Is there really no news in your industry that might be good for a blog or regular content addition? Is there helpful information on using your products that could be provided? Or a comparison chart for different products? How about an FAQ? How about linking to related (but not competitive) product sites, such as other kinds of pumps?

And while adding internal pages may boost PR or invite links, perhaps you might concentrate on listings in relevant directories? Are you in DMOZ? If you have submitted and not gotten in, why not apply to be an editor? A look at the backlinks of some of the sites that rank above yours might might uncover some possibilities.

Cheers, MJ

[Innomax Solutions]

Toolbar/External PR is irrespective of Search Engine Ranking Positions...However if you have good PR it means you must be having quality backlinks and if those backlinks have keyword relevant anchor text then there are chances of better SERP of your website...

[Webnauts]

PageRank is an algorithm which assigns every web page a score that indicates how important a page is. And the importance of a page is calculated based on the importance of all other pages that link to it and from the number of links each of the other pages have.

Who ever says that PageRank is not important, has absolutely no idea what he/she is talking about.

And now the PR Toolbar:

We all know that on the day the toolbar values are being exported the value for that day is pretty accurate. People who hate the toolbar must be people who cannot live with the idea that the public may be able to see what color of underwear they wear. :lol:

I am laughing but I am not kidding. The ones who are so much against the toolbar, must be the ones who care most, otherwise they would not try to debate that is it not important. They would just ignore the whole thing and we all would have peace. But NO! It must be debated, just in case their pages importance will be reduced, that they will not need to feel ashame about it. If their PageRank increases, then they are very proud though.

And now I have a question: Do you know my new directory SEO Search Bot (http://www.seosearchbot.com) ? I am not attempting to promote. HONESTLY!

Do you know how many guys told me that don't want to submit their sites there, only because the toolbar is grey? They have no idea? That is not the point. If the knew what backlinks it has, they would regret that they did not submit their sites before the toolbar values will be exported, as we will increase the review fees after that, if the do not want to provide us with a reciprocal.

So do you want to tell me that the green bar has no impact on success in some cases? Sorry, but I do not get that. ;)