Why wouldn't you concern yourself with page rank (or more specifical inbound link, which page rank is a indicator of) even though it may not be THE most influental part of the ranking equation, it is the one that is hardest to get right, because for most competitive phrases people have all optimised the onpage elements spot on. So, it's down to inbound link to determine who gets the highly sort after first position.

What makes you think that the google PR bar is behind by about 1-2 month? Is it the sandboxing of new links, because they are not work into the algo untill they google put them live, so that would make the Toolbar Page rank correct. I think The main reason Page show PR0 is because they have yet got a high enough pagerank to get on to the PR1 bracket, or that google is yet to do a page rank update.

let me try to explain about what rocos said.
SE will rank your pages as anchor text, this anchor text is IMPORTANT, but , if two pages have same anchor text...
I think, High PR page will get good position on SE.
Am I right, rocos?

Yes, high PageRank but, link power is -- link from theme base websites > natural linking > reciprocal link

Melon, I think it works more like this, take the anloge of a voting system, when you vote(link) for a page, You vote for the keyphrases you believe it should rank well on (Anchor Text) and Your vote will have more sway depnding on how inporant you are (Page Rank) and how many votes you cast (Amount of outbound links).

Page rank in itself must be a very small factor in the equation or PR 10 pages would starting getting high ranking on search term that they only have a little bit of onpage optimisation for. I Believe Page rank with the correct anchor text is the key.


kulappuwa, I don't under what you mean by you post.

link from theme base websites and natural links more valuable than just link

its true that PR is permanently 1-2 months behind (sometimes more). no one is quite sure why, but it always is.

as webmasters, you *should* concern yourselves with pagerank, because it affects just that...the rank of your page! the higher your PR, the better your site will do - FACT.

PR alone will not get you a good ranking, but then neither will Alt tags, or good titles. you have to combine the factors to get the full effects.

You DO need to try and get the highest PR you can, it's obvious why

Google likes people to think that it has got the relevance fliter down but I'm yet to see any proof. It has a couple of filter that track down unnatural linking and the only one I'm sure of is if you have site wise links that goes agasnt you (however i'm not even that sure of that), their is rumour that recipitioal links are being devalued , but again I seen no proof.

If what you talking about is the expert filter brough in will Hilltop, where certain sites are given expert status on certain keywords, then these are fairly few between, as far as can be told from what gooogle have been giving out.

I'm still in the frame of mind that Page rank is the biggest consideration when getting links, some people go for traffic, but I my frame of mind I'll get the best tagetted traffic frm search engines, unless Amozan want to give me a link on their front page. Even if I won't get the best eyword in my achort text I set up the internal linking so I will benefit me on the extra time the equation is incremented.

I don't quite understand what people mean by page rank being 1-2 month behind. I know that Google is now sandboxing links and combine with time waiting for page rank updates, it can take that long. But the Page Rank they use at any one time for the ranking is the page rank that is shown.

Originally Posted by nixies78@yahoo.

I don't quite understand what people mean by page rank being 1-2 month behind.

For example, you see the guy with PR7. You are looking at his backwards in Google, and you see all of them disappeared.
What you can say now? What will happen in next PR update? He will lose his PR? Maybe, but he can be placing right now very havy links, you don't know about it.
He will lose his positions? For sure. It will pass time before new links will take effect.
Besides, backwards can take effect as in a week, as in 2-3 months.
That's what people mean that PR is 1-2 months behind. What PR shows you - is the past.

About PR in general - what are you talking about, people? Good PR is necessary condition, when you are playing with serious guys. Like Breitling on your hand.
But what is much more important - where did you get it, ha?
You want in general positioning, not high PR. And here is where all the fun begins. On your positioning affects inbound links (all we already did what was necessary with titles, descs and so on). And in you inbound link so many important things!
Where on page it is placed, what PR of this page, where from this PR appeared, what theme of this page, what anchor of the link and what keywords are around of your link, what links are placed near yours. What positions this page has in google and what positions in general has site in google.
So many important factors, and you are talking about only PR!

Pavel, I Had trouble following exactly what you were saying, However I think we are in agreement on this point. Even though the Page Rank shown on the toolbar is not perfectly update indication of what the inbound links you have at that time. It is what is being used to calulate the ranking at anytime.

Plus you mention a whle load of other elements I have seem any indication of , are these through personal experience or researched from somewhere else, the ones I'm really excited about are:

What links are placed near your.
What posistion your site is in google (I find this one hard to believe because teir are so many different, bording on infinate, possible search terms, how could they possible work this into the equation.)

So many important factors, and you are talking about only PR!

The theme of this post is: Why does page rank matter?

Originally Posted by nixies78@yahoo.

What links are placed near your.
What posistion your site is in google (I find this one hard to believe because teir are so many different, bording on infinate, possible search terms, how could they possible work this into the equation.)

About links near yours - just feelings and responses of other optimizators. They are saying it affects and I can't see reasons, why no.
About position in google of site, where you are placing links - absolutely for sure, my own experience.
Sometimes happens, that site from same theme but absolutely different keywords getting positioned in keywords, that he has not, but partner site, that placed links to yours, has positioned in this keywords.

Originally Posted by nixies78@yahoo.

The theme of this post is: Why does page rank matter?

Ok. Let's say, PR is like your fuel indicator - empty, 1/4, half, 3/4, full.
Indicator is not affecting on anything, but it just indicates, what you car is possible to do. And it matters only in that way.

I see thei does seem to be some kind of theme suggestion with results but I'm not sure how much is posistion in the search engine and how much is elements on the page that links to you.

Ok. Let's say, PR is like your fuel indicator - empty, 1/4, half, 3/4, full.
Indicator is not affecting on anything, but it just indicates, what you car is possible to do. And it matters only in that way.

I think it more than this though, PR is a ranks that tell you the amount of vote your webpage has, and the votes your webpage can give. The vote which have become agruable the main factor that determines ranking on competative well optimises search phrases. It's more like a election, say page rank is the amount of people who would vote for you and therefore determine wether or not you win the election. Not all of the vote will count, say they may not have filled the form in correctly (have wrong achor text). You are right when you say Having a Pr of 9 may mean nothing at all if everything else is wrong. But even then you could put a second page and link back to yourself and then proble rank in first place.

Originally Posted by nixies78@yahoo.

It's more like a election, say page rank is the amount of people who would vote for you and therefore determine wether or not you win the election. Not all of the vote will count, say they may not have filled the form in correctly (have wrong achor text).

I don't think it's so easy. In elections vote is vote. Vote of president and vote of farmer has the same weight.

But in our elections everything is much more complicated. Vote of farmer means something only if farmers are electing the HEAD OF STATE FARM. And in this case voice of leading programmer of Miscrosoft doesn't mean much.
But the voice of old and wise farmer can make all the elections.

And this is fair and right, I think.

Yep Spot on, So a farmer would be someone with correct achor text, and the head of farmer suggests a high Page Rank. I like that anlogue.

Originally Posted by DaveTodd

PageRank is meant to be a multiplier of a sites Optimisation Score

If you have a low optimisation score, but sky high page rank, you won't rank well.

If you have a high optimisation score, but low page rank, you'll rank okay

If you have a high optimisation score, and high page rank, you'll do great, because the PR value will multiply your optimisation value, and make it even higher.

Whether it multiplies it by its value or by a derivitive of its "real" value, no-one really knows

Sorry Dave... totally disagree with you..
Page ranks means how many people having good authority have voted for you. It solely depends upon no. of pages linking back to you..

Nothing to do with optimization...
Now you will say support your self with evidence.. So here it is..

http://www.thetrip.com
Pagerank 7
And this page is lying here for 2-3 months. it has seen few PR updates. And the PR update coming in two weekd too will not effect it much..

Originally Posted by Pavel

I don't think it's so easy. In elections vote is vote. Vote of president and vote of farmer has the same weight.

But in our elections everything is much more complicated. Vote of farmer means something only if farmers are electing the HEAD OF STATE FARM. And in this case voice of leading programmer of Miscrosoft doesn't mean much.
But the voice of old and wise farmer can make all the elections.

And this is fair and right, I think.

I think people are mistaking about PageRank..
It depends upon slolely no. of BLs... You don`t need to have good or bad anchor text. Good anchor text helps in increasing your SERP but not PR.

Just serach for "exit" you will find yahoo.com and disney website at highest positions. reason: adult sites have put their links for people who are below 18 or 21 in their exit link....


yes a link from a higher PR page will boost your PageRank much... but there other important things too, total no. of links from that page, is PR of that page blocked or not, and position of your link, and the age of your link...

Good point Nandini, it can't be just a multipler.

The power of anchor text and page rank can be seen when people start to do googlebombs, the example of 'MISERABLE FAILURE' Being pointed to Bush's Biography when their isn't a single onpage optimisation for it.

I Believe page rank is stuipidly important but rather than the ranking equation being something like this:

(Onpage optimisation + Anchor text optimisation) * page rank

Maybe it more like this:

(Page rank with relevant kayphrase in anchor text + 1) * (onpage optimisation + 1)


Their you go , I've cracked the google Algo, think I'll start working on a cure for cancer.

Nixies

Originally Posted by nandini

Sorry Dave... totally disagree with you..
Page ranks means how many people having good authority have voted for you. It solely depends upon no. of pages linking back to you..

Nothing to do with optimization...
Now you will say support your self with evidence.. So here it is..

http://www.thetrip.com
Pagerank 7
And this page is lying here for 2-3 months. it has seen few PR updates. And the PR update coming in two weekd too will not effect it much..

This is an extremely interesting example. I see the site focused on the keyphrase "the trip" with Google tracking 595 backlinks. I also see Google's cache of your site showing exactly what you show now (e.g. nothing there before directly affecting what you have received in SERPs). According to Wordtracker results, the phrase gets searched approx. 30 times per day. Does you "test" still hold up on more competitive phrases? This would be very good information to have for phrases searched over... say... 150-200 times day.

I'm not putting down your results here at all. As stated, this is interesting and I am intrigued.

Originally Posted by nandini

I think people are mistaking about PageRank..
It depends upon slolely no. of BLs... You don`t need to have good or bad anchor text. Good anchor text helps in increasing your SERP but not PR.

I agree with you absolutely. PR depends only on amount of backwards and their PR, plus number of outbound links on that pages.
But when I was talking about elections, I meant SERP, not PR. We are all more interesting in good positions rather long green bar.

Wow I learned something here, great thread