Maybe not a meaningful way to measure an entire sites worth, but it does add monitary value to the site.

For example, if you were looking to start a website selling books and you were going to buy a domain and had two options...

which would you rather have?

wesellbooks.com , 0 PR, domain not even indexed yet (still have to wait for the sandbox)

or

booksellers.com PR 8, already comes up under the results?

I don't know of anyone would would say the PR0, so the higher PR has more demand, and with more demand you can charge higher prices.

I really wouldn't base my decision solely on the PR of the site. If everything else on the two sites were equal then sure I'd probably go for the higher PR. Even with bookseller sites though all else is probably not equal

I'd want to know where that PR came from. It can be easily manipulated and for all I would know it got that PR8 from very spammy links and will disappear at the next algorithm update.

How much content and how much quality content do the two sites have? Is the PR8 site a one or two page site while the PR0 site a 100 page site.

The PR is not what makes a site show up in search engines. It's a common misconception. A high PR is generally a result of the same things that have a site showing up in search results, but the PR is not the cause. So when you say the high PR site is already showing up in search results then to me it's not the PR alone that's adding value to the site. It's a lot of other things that also happened to raise the PR of the site.

If I were looking to buy a site my main decision about which to buy would be which will help my business more. I may be thinking that I want to buy the site for it's content which I would then use on my own site. I may be buying it for its customer list which I would add to my database. It's possible I would buy it because of the revenue it was generating. But PR is going to tell me none of those things.

It's possible that the PR0 site has done all of it's marketing offline and while it has no PR and doesn't show up in search engines it still gets more traffic than the PR8 site due to it's advertising in magazines and radio. Or it just has a large audience that comes from some other business.

Maybe it has one link pointing to it that sends it 100 visitors a day, but the contet is so well written that the site converts 20% who buy a high end product with a high profit margin. And maybe the PR8 site gets 1000's of visitors a day, but because the site itself is so poor most leave instantly and the site only converts 0.5% for a very low end product with very little profit margin.

For the two bookseller sites where is the inventory and how much does each site currently have? Where do the sites get there inventory from. Unless I get an inventory of books both sites are probably worthless.

Does the PR0 site while new also come with an application that will be able to offer recommendations to site visitors accurately enough to get them increase the items in their shopping cart, while the PR8 site is purely a static site poorly organized where visitors often can't find a book they want that's also in-stock.

There are a lot of other things I would want to know about a site beyond it's PR. The only think PR will tell me is something about the links that are coming into the site. And all that it really tells me are those links were able to transfer a certain amount of PR. A single link from a PR9 site might give your site a PR7 so for all I know the high PR site doesn't even have a lot of links.

The original question to this thread was 'does pr alone add wirth to a site' and in my interpretation I took that to mean just the PR. I think it's the other things on the site that give it it's worth. There are many extremely spammy sites with high PR's. I wouldn't buy a site like that for any price. Other people would. That's why I think it ultimately comes down to the buyer and what it is they're looking for when they make a purchase.

I'm not saying I wouldn't buy a site with high PR. I would just want to know a lot more about the site than the PR before making a decision.

I think you are kinda over-analyzing my example.

The thought was that looking JUST at the domain. You were going to create your own website from scratch, just using the domain.

From that point you could do your only SEO strategies to pull in the visitors you want.

There really is no disadvantage to a higher PR, but there is a disadvantage to no PR.

And with any advantage, there is value.

The truth is that domains with PR do in fact sell for more than those with none. So factually yes, they do add value to your site.

Right, but the initial question wasn't about the PR of a domain if I'm not mistaken it was about a website. Two different things really.

And I'll still say it depends on where the PR comes from. I agree that in most cases the higher PR domain or site is going to be better to have than one with no PR. But PR can be artificially created and a PR8 site can easily be a site that's banned at the next Google algorithm.

All I'm saying is that you need to know more than just the PR to determine a site or a domain's worth. But I do agree that in most cases the higher PR site is probably better. But PR can't be looked at in a vacuum.

How about this

All other things equal, a higher PR does add value to a site

Originally Posted by 3pointRoss

How about this

All other things equal, a higher PR does add value to a site

Yes. But only because the person buying it doesn't realise how pointless PR is.

Originally Posted by stOx

Yes. But only because the person buying it doesn't realise how pointless PR is.

I still disagree -

Yes, people over-emphesize the importance of PR. However, many SEO critics have gotten into this mindset that it is worthless all together.

No a higher PR alone won't make your site successful... it won't by itself bring in tons of traffic, by itself it won't make you any money...

However it is representative of backlinks, and backlinks are important for traffic, possible search engine rankings, etc

I don't think PR makes or breaks a site, but it is foolish to say that PR is meaningless.

Yeah backlinks are important, and pagerank is a measure of backlinks.
But to say pagerank is important because it's a measure of backlinks is like saying someone with a gold medal is a fast runner...
Yes, fast runners do get gold medals, but the medal it's self has no importance when it comes to judging how fast a person can run.

Instead of sayinig pagerank is important you should say pagerank isn't important, but backlinks are, Which is the actual truth.

Gold metals are not assigned every three months (or so) however...

Pagerank is always updated, and as such it goes up and down (or stays the same).

That is like saying shoe size isn't important, because what really matters is the size of your foot. Well sure, but shoe size is a measurement of foot size, so when buying shoe's it is important. (sorry for the goofy analogy)

If backlinks are important, and pagerank is a measure of backlinks... then pagerank is important by association according to logic.

However backlinks are not that important!

What is more important is the anchor text of the backlinks and PR (as shown on the toolbar) does not reflect that.

Originally Posted by 3pointRoss

If backlinks are important, and pagerank is a measure of backlinks... then pagerank is important by association according to logic.

I already said that that jump in logic is incorrect.
if you use the gold medal analogy, you are looking at someone with a gold medal and saying "they are a fast runner".
There is no need to have a jump in logic, Just look at backlinks and leave it at that, We don't have to play this game with google just because they have told us the rules.

And like chris says, Anchor text is the most important thing about backlinks, and PR doesn't even look at that. So you could have 1000 backlinks with the anchor text "radioactive banana cake", But if your site is about classic cars you would be better off having 10 backlinks with the anchoor text "classic cars"... Even though the 10 backlinks would mean a lower PR.

Ross I think I understand what you're saying, though please correct me if I'm wrong.

I think what you're saying with PR and the relation to backlinks is that if you see a site with a high PR then chances are it has a lot of backlinks (or at least has done something right where backlinks are concerned) and can be used in a way as a measurement to say that site has done something right.

I will agree that all other things being equal I'd think the site with the higher PR would have more worth. I don't think that's always going to be the case, but I think for the most part it probably will be.

I also agree that PR isn't completley meaningless though I'm sure I've said it is myself often enough. PR is still part of the algorithm for how a site ranks in a search, but I believe it's weight in the algorithm has been and will continue to be reduced. It's not meaningless, but not nearly as meaningful as many people seem to think.

My view on PR is it can't be looked at in isolation. Like I mentioned earlier a single link from a PR9 site might give your site a PR7 or at least a PR6. Another site could have 1000's of links from low PR sites and end up being a PR4 or PR5. Both may end up getting the same traffic. And in this obviously oversimlified scenario the site with the one link is completely dependant on that one link for it's traffic. So if I was looking to buy one of the two sites I'm not sure I would go for the higher PR site in this case.

Now admittedly this isn't the most realistic example, but my point is that nothing really can be looked at in isolation. I wouldn't look at traffic in isolation or even revenue in isolation.

I understand what you're saying though and I agree that in general the higher PR site (all other things being equal) will probably have a higher worth than the lower PR site, but again that isn't always going to be the case and for me it's the totality of a site or a domain that determines it's worth not any one thing.

Everyone is still over analyzing, and I am done arguing/debating but I will leave with this

I already said that that jump in logic is incorrect.
if you use the gold medal analogy, you are looking at someone with a gold medal and saying "they are a fast runner".
There is no need to have a jump in logic, Just look at backlinks and leave it at that, We don't have to play this game with google just because they have told us the rules.

Again the gold medal is a one time measure of running speed, where pagerank is constantly updated.

All other things equal, pagerank is a measure of a valuable aspect of a webpage... backlinks. Anchor text aside, the more backlinks you have the greater chance you have of people seeing the backlinks and clicking on them. If you have zero backlinks, you miss out on that chance.

The fact is - people are willing to pay more for a page all other things equal, with higher PR. Weither or not PR is blown out of proportion, it is the measure of something valuable... even if it is only of slight value.

Originally Posted by 3pointRoss

Again the gold medal is a one time measure of running speed.

It is? I could go buy one tomorow.. i could do the same with PR.

I'm not sure what we're doing is overanalyzing. I've been saying the same thing over and over just in different ways. At least I've been trying to. I think you're missing something about Page Rank in that it can be manipulated. And all I've been trying to say is you can't assign worth to it in isolation. I've just been trying to find different ways to say it and give reasons why I see it that way.

I hope I haven't offended you in any way by disagreeing. If I have I apologize. It was never my intention. I think that all the different points of view and all the different ways of expressing our opinions can be valuable to many people reading and helping them decide for themselves. For me forums are partly a way for people to present different ideas and then debate each side of the issue.

PR is not too important now

I wouldnt count it. I would treat traffic like your investment portfolio....diversify.

Great point Dalmation. I think I may have alluded to it in one of my posts in this thread when mentioning that all that PR could come from one site alone (in theory at least) and your site would then be counting on all its traffic from one source.

You never want to have all your traffic coming from one place. As great as that traffic can be it can also disappear completely very fast.

Pr is always better than alexa ranking.
Just my 2 cents.

Definitely better than the Alexa ranking, which can only measure a site's popularity through people who have the Alexa toolbar installed. It's incredibly easy to manipulate the Alexa ranking, though for the most popular sites like Google, Yahoo, etc they actually do a decent job. The Alexa rank doesn't hold up at all though for smaller sites.