Google Page Rank is not important...

**herbal_ali** · 02-25-2006, 06:55 PM

Chris hirst and van gogh have posted this about 100 times already but there still seems to be people who don't understand this...

PR is not important, it does not give you sales, it does not give you quality traffic, it does not give you a strong community or memberbase and it does not fill you with any happiness either. all it does is tell you roughly how well you've been doing in google...four months ago.

just thought i'd post this........

**chrishirst** · 02-26-2006, 05:40 AM

.....

**Guerrilla** · 02-27-2006, 06:08 PM

Ranking on competitive keywords in your target market will give you quality traffic and more sales (a community is built by fresh and sticky content not SEO).

Page rank is an indication of how many links are pointing at your site (I say indication because you could have a page rank 6 site with only 1 link pointing to you but it is on a page with a high page rank also it is only updated every 3-4 months).

The big factor with how this effects your rankings is the achor text used, the title text and PR of the page holding the link and the text surrounding the links that link to the site.

If I do a search for a keyword im trying to rank on and the first page is full of page rank 3 sites then i instantly think that it wont be a hard keyword to optimise for as i dont have to get that many links to have more than they do. if i see a page full of PR6 sites I have to go to greater depths of analysis to see how much work it will be for me. Also you can learn a lot of things about a site from the amount of registered backlinks going to a site compared to its pagerank.

PR on its own doesnt do anything but to say it is unimportant in my mind is wrong... sorry if I upset anyone by saying that.

**Atazoth** · 02-27-2006, 08:29 PM

I don't think it is totally unimportant... If it were it would not be there but it is less important than it used to be I agree...

Remember "PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of this page", Straight from the toolbar mouse over.

Though, important or not I do like seeing the little green bar move to the right whenever it is updated.

**vangogh** · 02-27-2006, 09:19 PM

It really isn't important anymore. The little green bars are there because we all like them and if it's getting people to download the googlebar it's not going anywhere.

I think PR is still part of the algorithm though just reduced to a minor role. I've actually started posting an article about it on my blog. The first part went up last night. Part 2 tomorrow and the last part is due on Thusday. It's the last part that will explain why PR isn't important anymore, but for anyone who wants to read the from the beginning the article is From Page Rank to Relevance

**rehash** · 03-02-2006, 06:45 AM

it's not important, it's very important!
make an experiment
take a backlink from a PR2 to a new site
and a backlink from PR8 to another site
and see which will do better

**Guerrilla** · 03-02-2006, 10:23 AM

my monies on PR8 site

**stOx** · 03-02-2006, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rehash

it's not important, it's very important!
make an experiment
take a backlink from a PR2 to a new site
and a backlink from PR8 to another site
and see which will do better

Do better in what sense?
The only thing a high PR backlink is guarenteed to do is help you increase your PR, Which is useless. It won't help you get visitors.

Do another experiment, Get a backlink from a PR2 site with 250'000 visitors a day and a backlink from a pr8 site with 15 visitors a day,, and see how it effects your traffic, something which is useful. PR doesn't buy your product and PR does't click your adverts.

**kline11** · 03-02-2006, 02:03 PM

So why post it 101 times?

**herbal_ali** · 03-02-2006, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rehash

it's not important, it's very important!
make an experiment
take a backlink from a PR2 to a new site
and a backlink from PR8 to another site
and see which will do better

rehash, PR does nothing to your traffic...literaly. when it comes to links, it's nothing to do with the pr of the site but the traffic it's passing on to you. (as stox has pointed out)

Also, what makes PR really usless is that it only updates every 4 months, so you never tell your true PR at the time (if there's any point in knowing)

**vangogh** · 03-02-2006, 05:15 PM

I'm going to ask the same question as stOx. In what sense will the PR8 link do better? If you mean the PR8 link will increase the PR of your site more then yes I absolutely agree it will. What it won't do is get you ranked higher for a query that will help your business or lead to higher conversions.

Assuming two sites are equally relevant to your site then I agree the higher PR site will be the better link, but a link from a relevant site with a low PR will be better for your traffic and your business then a link from a high PR site that has little to do with the topic of your site.

**Guerrilla** · 03-02-2006, 06:50 PM

if you get a link from the site with pr8 with your keywords in the anchor text it will do more for your rankings that the same link from a pr2 site.

I assume "do better" means ranks higher.

**vangogh** · 12:34 AM

The reason for the ranking in that case is the anchor text and not the PR of the site and it's not necessarily true that the PR8 site will be the better site for that link. It might be, but it's not simply because the PR is higher. Instead of repeating myself again I'll point you again to my article (the link is a couple posts up) and I posted the last part of the article earlier tonight.

I assume though you may not believe me so here's Revisiting Page Rank Lunacy an article from search engine watch one of the more respected sites about seo.

**CAL** · 03-03-2006, 01:02 AM

I think PR makes a difference, especially at time of sale.

If there were 2 sites that were exactly the same in content, one ranked PR7 and one ranked PR2, which would you buy?

**vangogh** · 01:39 AM

Which I would buy would have nothing to do with PR. I'm not sure why everyone seems to think PR is a measure of how good a site it is.

If I have a site and get one link from a PR9 site my site will probably be a PR8 or a PR7 at the least. So what does that say about my site. It just says I have one link from a high PR site.

PR doesn't measure a site's traffic. It doesn't measure a site's quality.

Most of the site's you see with a high PR may be good site's and may have traffic, but it's not because of the sites PR. The site most likely has been doing a lot of things to get that traffic and the PR is probably an effect of that. It's not the cause though.

I'm not saying that PR has 0 importance. What I'm saying is that there are other things that are far more important. Everyone seems to equate PR with the only thing that matters when getting a link from another site. PR is meaningless in any search engine other than Google. Yes Google does get the most searches, but it's still less than 50% so PR applies to less than half of all searches.

Also if PR was the most important thing then you really wouldn't see a lower PR site above a higher PR site in the search results. You may see high PR sites in the results, but it's not because of the PR. The PR and the ranking are both the result of other things.

**stOx** · 03-03-2006, 02:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CAL

I think PR makes a difference, especially at time of sale.

If there were 2 sites that were exactly the same in content, one ranked PR7 and one ranked PR2, which would you buy?

if they were identicle in every way, apart from PR, i would buy the PR7 site.
But only because then i could make money selling text links to people who think PR matters.

I think the thing poeple are mixing up is cause and effect.
Good well ranking sites do have high PR. But they don't rank well in serps because of thier PR, They got the PR because they rank well in serps...
People link to good sites.

**chrishirst** · 03-03-2006, 07:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CAL

I think PR makes a difference, especially at time of sale.

If there were 2 sites that were exactly the same in content, one ranked PR7 and one ranked PR2, which would you buy?

You are looking at the wrong thing. Only the insular world of webmasters know about or even care about PR. The vast majority of buyers out there think PR means Public Relations, they don't know what it is, don't see it and care even less about the little green bar.
All they want to know is will it be delivered on time and is it cheaper.

PR will make no difference on sales, unless you are selling links to the newbies who don't know any better.
And of course selling links based on PR will likely get you a ban with Google.

**rudradatta** · 04:00 AM

hi, ali

what you have writtn must be fine according to your veiw. according to you PR is not important, it does not give you sales, it does not give you quality traffic, it does not give you a strong community or memberbase and it does not fill you with any happiness either. all it does is tell you roughly how well you've been doing in google...four months ago.

what you have written as does not that does.a good page rank is essential enough for quality traffic, a status for your site, and a good page rank tells about the quality of your website.

if you have no page rank or a very low rank then your site never can get quality traffic and the status of a quality site. a good page rankwebsite can most capable of pouring robust sales.

cheers
rudradatta

**stOx** · 03-04-2006, 06:37 AM

Quote:

good page rank is essential enough for quality traffic

Based on what?
How does high PR ensure you quality traffic?

Quote:

and a good page rank tells about the quality of your website.

No it doesn't. It just means you have submitted your site to a lot of directories.

Sites with high taffic do get high PR, But the traffic isn't caused by the PR, The PR is caused by the traffic.
people link to good sites. You have it all back to front.

The logic people have is similar to buying a gold medal, then claiming to be a fast runner. While fast runners do get gold medals their ability to run isn't caused by the possesion of a gold medal.

The only time PR can be used to show how popular a site is if link popularity is 100% natural and you have enever gone to get a backlink yourself.
In other words, Poeople linking to you because they want to.
Otherwise you are just lying to yourself.

**herbal_ali** · 03-04-2006, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rudradatta

if you have no page rank or a very low rank then your site never can get quality traffic and the status of a quality site. a good page rankwebsite can most capable of pouring robust sales.

where the hell did you get that information from? You can continue thinking that PR is necessary for sales and quality of the site but i'm telling you, it's not going to get you anywhere if you predominantly(sp?) believe in that.