So what’s the deal with PageRank? Should you panic over every little change in your PageRank scores? Or do you even need to focus on increasing your PageRank?
Although those are all good questions that you have, before I dive into the Google PageRank (PR) metrics, let’s look at exactly what PageRank is and how it’s gained or lost. By understanding how PageRank is calculated, you can see its specific limitations in the evolving world of search, as well as what it can still be used to measure effectively.
What is PageRank?
As far as a working definition of PageRank goes, you don’t need look any further than Google’s own Technology Overview page, which describes PageRank as:
When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data.
Basically PageRank, which was also named after Google co-founder Larry Page, assigns a score to every page in its index based on the number of websites linking to it and the relative quality of these links. PageRank scores are reported on a 0-10 scale, with PR0 being the lowest indexed rank and PR10 being the highest.
If you have a new website your PR will typically be N/A until a PageRank update happens.
And if you are wondering how PageRank is exactly determined, according to PageRank Explained, the equation used to calculate PageRank is likely version of the following formula:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))
The formula above is the original equation that was published when Google was first developing the PageRank metric, so although it’s probably gone through a lot of changes over the years, the base variables are probably still similar.
And while you probably don’t care how it’s calculated, the important conclusion to draw is that links coming from a PR3 site with 5 outbound links would be more valuable than links coming from a PR5 site with 1000 outbound links.
The other thing to note about PageRank is that it operates on a logarithmic scale. This means that the difference between a PR0 ranking and a PR1 isn’t the same as the difference between a PR7 site and a PR8 site. This image below by Elliance should give you a good understanding of how it works.
How often is PageRank updated?
In 2008 there were 5 PageRank updates, 5 in 2009, 1 in 2010, and 3 so far in 2011. Although historically it’s updated a few times a year in the toolbar, it’s actually constantly being updated on Google’s end.
The reason Google doesn’t want to constantly show you your new Google PR score on a daily basis is because they don’t want you to obsess about it instead of focusing on creating a site that doesn’t just provide value to people, but also solves problems.
So whether you have a new site or an old site, it’s good for you to realize that your PageRank score is being update and you shouldn’t focus on what the toolbar is reporting. Instead you should focus on your marketing efforts to grow your business.
Is PageRank important?
PageRank does not correlate that strongly to search engine results placement, just because you have a high PageRank it doesn’t automatically guarantee you a high placement on Google. And if you also rank really well, it also doesn’t guarantee you a high PageRank.
If you look at the chart below it explains the science behind ranking correlations:
In SEOmoz’s study, they analyzed the search results for 4,000 keyword phrases and compared the sites that appeared in these SERPs with their individual PageRank scores. If the two variables were perfectly correlated, in which the highest PageRank pages were first, the correlation would be 1.00. But as you can see from the graph, the correlation between rankings and PR in Google’s SERPs was barely .20.
The overall result of the study was that Google’s PageRank is, slightly correlated with their rankings as well as with the rankings of other major search engines.
So while it’s true that PageRank played a huge role in Google’s ranking algorithm in the past, its role today clearly isn’t as important in terms of rankings, due in large part to the fact that plenty of other ranking factors have been introduced since the launch of PageRank. As more ranking factors are introduced, their relative weight must get smaller, as each represents a smaller percentage of a site’s total score.
For example, when PageRank was first launched, it was one of maybe a few dozen factors that were considered by Google’s ranking algorithm. Today, however, the algorithm considers more than 200 different variables, decreasing the importance of each single ranking factor significantly.
My PageRank experience
I’ve own dozens of sites and they have all have a different PR. Some of the sites I own have a PR that is as low as 3 and I have a few that are as high as a PR8. The one thing that I’ve noticed is that 5 or so years ago the sites had really high PageRanks did really well in Google. But sadly it isn’t the case anymore.
It could have been the way I was increasing my PageRank as I was getting sites like TechCrunch and all of Gawker Media to link to my blog from every one of their pages through a business development deal I did with them (no money was exchanged). Doing this not only drove good traffic to my site, but it typically got my site to a PageRank of at least 7 if not 8. After years of doing this and realizing that I wasn’t really ranking higher on search engines by boosting my PR and my traffic wasn’t growing by leaps and bounds, I went back to old school link building to increase my traffic.
I personally don’t focus on PageRank anymore, but instead I focus on:
- Social media traffic – as your social media traffic increases, you’ll typically get more links coming into your site and in the long run you’ll rank better.
- Create good content – if you have good content that is unique, people will find out about your website and link to it.
- Clean code – if your website code isn’t search engine friendly, you won’t rank that well. From meta tags to URL structures, those simple things can have a big impact on your traffic. For example, by just tweaking TechCrunch’s meta description and title tags I was able to increase their search engine traffic by over 30%.
- Time – SEO is no longer a quick game in which you can rank on the top of search engines without putting in the time and effort. Don’t focus on growing too fast, but instead be patient. Build quality links instead of going for quantity and just give them time to kick in.
- Site authority – it’s all about the long tail. If you want to get millions of visitors to your website you can’t just focus on ranking for a few keywords, you have to rank for thousands if not millions. Build links to your internal pages and you’ll notice that your overall site will get a higher authority and rank better across the board.
Conclusion
So based on this information, it would be easy to assume that PageRank doesn’t matter as much anymore. And, in some ways, it doesn’t. Having a higher PageRank isn’t going to get you ranked higher in the search engine results, which means that working towards a high PR isn’t going to bring in more website traffic or, consequently, more sales. From the standpoint of improving the metrics that actually make a difference for your site, it’s true that PageRank doesn’t matter much anymore.
Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google sums up this idea nicely in a post on the Google Webmaster Central blog:
I posit that none of us truly care about PageRank as an end goal. PageRank is just a stand-in for what we really want: for our websites to make more money, attract more readers, generate more leads, more newsletter sign-ups, etc.
However, this doesn’t mean that PageRank is totally worthless. There are two areas in which PageRank still plays an important role:
- The way PageRank contributes to your site’s indexing frequency.
- Using it as an indicator of penalties from from bad back linking strategies.
First off, PageRank plays a role in determining how often your site is re-indexed. If your site has a high PageRank, Google considers it to be more important and worthy of being crawled and analyzed more often than a lower PR site. Being crawled more frequently can lead to content being ranked in the search engines more quickly, so for this reason, having a high PageRank is still important.
Also, PageRank has long been used by Google as a warning shot to penalize website owners who are using linking strategy that violate Google’s terms of service. Recently, both Forbes.com and JC Penney suffered high profile penalties for using paid inbound links to boost their PageRank unnaturally or for selling them.
So with regards to our original question about whether or not PageRank matters anymore, the answer is yes… and no. While focusing on improving your PageRank isn’t going to directly correlate with better rankings I wouldn’t recommend abandoning it entirely.
If you see a dramatic downward shift in your PageRank, take a good, hard look at the SEO strategies you’re using. If your number continues to increase gradually, it’s smooth sailing for you. 
So do you think PageRank matters?
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Great thumb in the air gauge – but most clients (at least mine) are looking at other metrics.
Definitely, the wise clients always dig deeper.
Very greart article…
Thanks, Glad you enjoyed it
it doesn’t matter to me anymore but like everybody else, I was obsessed with it. I’m back to old school link building and link wheels.
Awesome, good luck Chris
Page Rank stopped being of any indication of ranking at least 5 years back. We use it only to check Page Rank of external sites where we may be having no-follow links.
Definitely, it has phased out tremendously in importance over the years.
This happened because there are a lot more things that count these days and this means that SEO means more work now. You have to pay attention to more factors and each one of them has a great contribution to your site’s reputations.
Yea, one of the big factors I pay attention to is link growth.
Are you able to make a post about the most important things that Google takes into account these days?
I’ll consider writing a post about that in the future.
Thank you for your response. I am waiting for that post with much interest! In fact, I am waiting with much interest for all your posts
No problem. Glad to hear it.
Great breakdown. Glad to see how many times they updated it. In 2010, seemed like they never did and saw you wrote it was once. Like many others, I don’t stress about it. It’s an easy barometer to glance at, but I give MozRank from SEOmoz more clout and believe it’s a better high level metric.
Thanks, Glad you enjoyed the post. MozRank is pretty accurate in it’s metrics.
Okay,
a high page rank does not mean your page will have a high ranking in Google. However, getting a PR 5 link is still much better than a PR 2 link, all other things equal (i.e. number of outbound links from that page).
No?
It all depends, but you are on the right track with that thinking.
Google recently announced that it was shedding more light on PR, this gives bloggers a kind of indication that PR is still a very important factor when it comes to ranking.
Interesting, I don’t think they will provide anyone with any indication of how relevant it is though.
Nice article. I remember a time when my mood used to be dependent on my page rank and search engine position. Nowadays I couldn’t care less — it’s all about the traffic. In fact, just looking back and crunching the numbers, fluctuations in page rank had no correlation to the traffic I was getting.
Definitely, it all comes down to traffic.
Oops, let me correct myself — instead of saying it all comes down to ‘traffic’ I meant to say it comes down to the … I can’t think of the word right now (it’s a bit late in the evening), … I think the word is “conversion.” In other words, if you’re selling something, then it comes down to the sale. If you’re writing something you want people to read, then it comes down to someone actually reading it. As opposed to just traffic “walking by.” Hopefully that makes sense
Yes, conversion rate is important. I track my conversions on a daily basis with KISSmetrics.
Page rank is like a status symbol for your website, As I think.
Definitely, I like the way you put that
I have never seen such a detailed report on Pagerank, You are right page rank is just for authority, it has no relation with serp and traffic.
Thanks for the research full article.
Chirag, glad you found it helpful. Cheers!
Anyway, PageRank is still valuable for any website and you have to take good care of it.
Yes you shouldn’t ignore it. I look at my PageRank once every 3 or 4 months.
All of the above points for page rank also i heard about quality back links from other reputed sites are most important factor for Page Rank.
Definitely, back links allow you to gauge and utilize your metrics better.
But how can i get these links, is there any specific way or procedures? plz help me out
Start blogging and creating quality content.
Ok thanks mate, i will follow it
Also, be consistent with your blogging. It helps a lot.
These days I rely mostly on SEOMoz metrics! I cant remember the last time I looked at PR as an indicator for the power of a domain/ Page.
Thanks for the info
SEOmoz is a great resource, MozRank is a good indicator of how well your site is performing.
I think PR is an OK way to estimate the power of a specific page but the problem is inexperienced entrepreneurs tend to think that high PR equals sales & revenues. At the end of the day PR is just a number and there are many other elements that need to be in play in order for things to work how they should.
Defintely, I complete agree. There are a whole range of metrics one must consider.
I think one needs to focus on quality more than anything else.
Definitely, content is king. Provide quality.
It is not the PR of the URL that matters. It is the PR of the HomePage that interests Google – the top factor in the google algorithm.
The second factor is the boost given by Google to HomePages that are competing for a keyword. In this situation, HomePages with PR0-4 will count as PR 5
High HomePage PageRank does not guarantee top postioning. the benefit of understanding HomePage PageRank is the other way round. If a website does not have sufficient HomePage PageRank it will not be able to compete for keywords with high HPR-KD – HomePage PageRank keyword difficulty.
Hope this helps
Kind regards
David
Great words of advice David, I agree.
I believe PR does not matter too much but it is great to have a good PR because the public believes it is a big deal.
You can leverage deals with a high PR. I always look under the hood but take PR into consideration because I know I can sell a website quicker and more money if I have a higher PR for the website.
Perception is not reality, but you do have a point
Very recently a client asked me the same question “Is PageRank still that important” and I have forwarded this article to him.
In India SEO companies still talk really big about PR so they can sell their link building plans.
I too have a few websites with PR from 0 to 5 and many pages of the site with 0 PR rank well and drive good traffic
I think Alexa rank is a better indicator, but people will always have differing viewpoints.
Thanks for the great explanation.. I was getting a PR0 till first 14 months, then suddenly I got PR4. It’s 3 now. I just don’t care about PR.
Yea, instead you should focus on your traffic numbers. If you are growing at a healthy pace, you’ll be fine.
I have noticed this to be true with some of my sites. I have a few low PR sites, but have no problem getting found on google for specific terms. I had never really understood the correlation between PR and visibility.
There is a huge correlation in links and rankings though. (assuming your links are natural and of good quality)
very good suggestions..tx Neil
do you suggest any ebooks for same?
I sugges just reading up on blogs online. No book can give you up to the date information.
No problem Sam. Thanks for reading Quick Sprout.
Thanks Neil- I saved this one so as to check the links out in more depth.
Awesome, glad you found it interesting
Thanks Neil. Great info much of which was new to me! Thanks for the good info!
Glad I could shed some light on the situation. cheers
PageRank doesn’t matter, search engine results ranking doesn’t matter – if your product/service is relatively niche and your customers need recommendations or old-fashioned marketing to know about the product (and thus subscribe!) they are not going to search for it per se.
Of course the less technical web user might type your company name into a search engine rather than in the URL bar, but that should return your product within the first page with minimum effort. Unless you went for a really generic name…
Interesting, I would have to say it isn’t as black and white though. Thanks for your feedback though.
Chris, your comment is refreshing, in that it serves as a reminder that many people searching for a product or a service are not webmasters, or keyword savvy. It is always interesting and fun to watch how others search for your product.
Yea, I would actually say most of the people searching aren’t savvy.
EYE OPENING,GOOD EDUCATION, THANX
Glad you enjoyed it Rajeev.
Thanks for this great article Neil. I think what you explained here is totally true about PageRank so I have nothing to say than ‘bravo!’
Thanks Ayoonis, glad you found the article helpful
Good thoughts Neil.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
I did, more posts about SEO get me reading. But there is only so many secrets you can give away, right?
Well, of course. I am open to giving away most of them, but not all of them.
Niel, First time when i checked my sites page rank it was 5. I start monetizing it and people has shown interest and paid well, you are one of them. After 6 month my page rank down to 3 people are now not very much interested in my site. So in this regards page rank hit me very hard. Otherwise it hardly matters for me. Google is still sending a lots of visitor and day by day my site is gaining alexa rank. people are coming.
That doesnt necessarily mean PR matters in driving traffic. It is just a status symbol.
I think PR is certainly something to monitor, but doesn’t require much attention. If it jumps up, have a little celebration. If it’s fallen, then you need to check your strategies..
I think it’s become less of an influence in SERPs because people are more and more searching for not just relevant, but current content.
I always get frustrated when I see articles that are 3, 5, even 10 years old show up in my searches. (And then have to filter by date.) Those results are usually from sites with high PR that are “well-established,” older sites, even though the content is next to useless.
Definitely, I like your take on it. Something to look at, but not indicative of any success.
Hey Neil,
completely off topic; but is by any chance sproutsocial.com your startup? the color palette of the site and the leaves look all too simliar
No, its not mine. Thanks for asking though
nice post Neil, I am going to make infographic about your last blog.
Thanks, let me check it out when done
Ya, I rarely look at pagerank anymore myself. I am a big fan of SEOMoz and their tool bar. I find the Page Authority and Domain Authority on their toolbar to be a much better gauge of the value of a page or overall site.
To think we used to just look at the PR of a home page of a site to make a determination of how valuable the site was.
SEOmoz does have a good toolbar. Thanks for reading
Excellent article. Cleared up many things for me.
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks Mark
This answered some questions that I had for a while. Thank you Neil Patel.
Glad I could clear some things up Buntu
Thanks for the clearing the doubts. Hope this will help my client to understand to not to always focus on page rank rather than ranking on top 5
Good luck Ayush!
Myth busting always good link bait! Glad I have somewhere I can point my friends next time they tell me their PR has moved.
Haha, awesome!
You gave some idea on Google Panda and now about PR . Great post and got to know more details about it… Thanks for the share…
Online Business Virtual Assistant
Glad you found it useful Shilipi, Cheers
Great article Neil. If PR was historically linked closely to not only content, but links, and google know link building can be manipulated it really makes sense for businesses to concentrate their efforts on social media interaction as more difficult to ‘manipulate’ than standard link building strategies. Our advice to small businesses – get your website technically structured correctly, concentrate on content, both insite and via social media.
Thanks for the tips, I think they are great additions to this post.
great info! i especially love the image below by Elliance. Thanks!
Haha, thanks. Appreciate that you enjoyed the post.
I don’t obsess about page rank too much. Good content and consistent link building mo matter the page rank is better. You can waste a lot of time trying to focus on high page rank.
Definitely, you are right on point!
It amazing how many components need to be right, but to me valuable content and relationships mean a lot in the big picture. It seems like PR is a result of those + seo…
Good article, thanks.
It is a slight barometer of how things are looking. Thanks for reading!
For those of us who do not enjoy the statistical part you did a great job of breaking it down.
Easy to understand and that is MOST helpful.
Love the graphics as most are visual.
As always great “Thought Material”…thanks
Debbie, thanks for the kind thoughts. Glad you got some insights into the working of page rank
Good article Neil, there sooo many people claiming they can help, I often feel like I’m spreading myself too thin!
Just focus your SEO efforts on one or two things. Like link building or optimizing your meta tags. And then move on slowly as you conquer each item.
I am so glad I found this article, Neil. I was marketing on the internet back in 2004-2006 then quit, and now I’m trying to learn what’s changed in the last 5 or 6 years so I can start again. Your insights are very helpful.
A lot has changed. Thanks for reading and good luck!
Does Page rank matter with your Search Engine rankings?
Did you even read the article?
Haha, thanks guys. But yes Astrologer…if you read the article you will find that it doesn’t.
Not really.
hi, from my experience i noticed that sometimes the same site gets more traffic as long as it has pr3 than with pr4. how would you explain this ?
The article explains in depth why this occurs, PR is essentially a useless metric.
But Neil if page rank is not so important how come it’s so hard to compete with and topple higher page rank sites from the Ist page of Google?
They have a higher page rank due to popularity. Sometimes site strength has nothing to do with “popularity” but rather usefulness and quality of content.
Thank you for the article as i always have been thinking that page rank is most important thing in the world of internet. i never read such articles like this. If you are true that this is now thing of past then i am happy that i am concentrating new and unique content..
Glad I could help, good luck
Another very interesting topic here Neil, hmm… so I might concentrate now on my content rather than focusing on other stuff..
That might be the best tact
Actually PR is now dramatically changes at the end of every month after the Panda Update, and in my opinion now PR is depending on the sharing and quality stuff rather than inbound links.
Could be, from my experience and research PR is still something that is not as relevant as most people believe.
So, what do you think, about the real meaning of PR right now?
I think it’s a good indicator and something people show to others to prove relevance.
Thanks for another tip on the business I’m in. Actually, we’ve been discussing with a co-worker that quality is important than quantity. Because mostly people would post anything just to have ranks but soon, it might be deleted.
ellen
You definitely have a point. If you are in it for the short-term maybe it will work. But if you want sustained growth you should always strive for content.
Great stuff – It’s really helping on my idea about this game.
keep it up
Glad I could help, keep pumping away and you will definitely see results.
I look at PR as something that you would shoot for in the long term. I think working hard to create good content that will last is way more important to focus on. If you build your website right the first time PR should follow.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, thanks for the short summary and thanks for reading
What is the word interpretation of this PR formula in words.
I don’t understand your question?
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) this is the old one I think? not to sure though
That is NOT the old one, pretty dang sure.
Yea, it is the one I could find online.
Should be accurate.
most important is the position of web site with some keywoard, we have some case when a site page rank 3 is in the lower position then b site who have page rank 1. It is fancy to website have high page rank, but much beter is to have high positon with some keywoard in google.
That is true Milan. Often times having a high ranking keyword that drives traffic is the biggest indicator of your website’s overall success!
Neil Patel..your post is very nice. i grasped many things. According to me PageRank doesn’t matter so much. Important things is TRAFFIC on website. For traffic always placed at 1 page of SERP.
Having a keyword that is number 1 on Google can make all the difference when you are looking to drive sales and grow your brand.
Watching toolbar PageRank is a frustrating game. It’s hard to see it move downward for no apparent reason, and hard to see pages with lower PR outrank my pages. The fact that it even exists gives one the idea that if you just had the right links, with the right anchor text, from the right sites, Google would show you some PR love and loads of traffic would follow.
Definitely, you make some good points. PageRank can become frustrating at times and can throw you off. Just stick to providing good content and links.
Best of luck.
Thanks again for dissecting things to show what’s important and what’s superficial. I really like the way you put it when you said “SEO is no longer a quick game”. Effort and content will always guarantee success in the long run. Thank you very much.
Yea, it sucks that it isn’t a quick game anymore. I miss those good ol’ days.
At least now, it creates a bigger barrier to entry as only serious companies will focus on SEO verses the people who are just looking to get rich quick.
And the debate goes on…. ive head both sides and still have no clue who is right
Definitely,
It’s something you really have to decide for on your own how useful you think it is for you.
Google makes it a point to not disclose their updates, algorithm or PR. You can know the moment it happens though by creating a notification in google with the search terms “page rank update”.
Great point,
Thanks for the information.
You can know the moment it happens but you have no idea what happened
Google keeps this real secret. MSN on the other way tell you what they changed.
True, google likes to keep things “in house” so to speak.
Hi Neil, I think this is a great post for SEO initiates, though I do think you could have clarified point 3 further.
URL structures are massively important and folk can search for best practice on the subject elsewhere now that you’ve highlighted it’s importance. However, improving meta descriptions (MD) isn’t going to affect rankings directly; it’s importance is (arguably) greater than just being a mere ranking/relevance factor. The MD’s most vital role is being the opportunity to call searchers to action, to tell them before they’ve clicked on your result that yours is the site they need visit most, to fulfil their need. It’s the first place that SEOs need to think like marketers.
The MD is very likely to directly affect click-through and bounce rates (click-through by offering a descriptive caption of what the page is about, calls to action etc and bounce by allowing users to decide before clicking-through whether the page is relevant to their search term) in the SERPs, which can – to some extent – also impact rankings.
PS – All that keyword-rich content, without even as much as asking for a link in return. You’re welcome
Haha, thanks Curtis. Appreciate the insights you are providing for the readers. I agree with much of what you are saying, you have to really spot which phrases and calls to action will drive the most clicks. It’s essential!
It always amazes me how people say Page Rank doesn´t matter and then when you are either trying to link with them or sell your site Page Rank becomes the most important thing in the universe.
It is a very interesting dynamic. It’s a status symbol that has long lost its meaning. I guess it is what it is and you just have to deal with it.
People still think that Page Rank is very important but in fact it is not that important anymore. It helps you with other things, but PageRank itself doesn’t mean much these days.
Yep, pagerank has certainly lost its value over the years.
Super-Duper weblog! I am loving it!! Will come back again taking you RSS feeds also, Thank you.
Thank you for subscribing!
I am glad to be a visitor of this gross web blog ! , thankyou for this rare info ! .
No worries. Hopefully it helps you with your marketing efforts.
You can leverage deals with a high PR. I always look under the hood but take PR into consideration because I know I can sell a website quicker and more money if I have a higher PR for the website.
That is one way of getting it done. Having a higher PR can make your website appear more credible and therefore more profitable.
Well ranking algorithm of Google is really becoming complicated as time goes by. PR maybe not that important to ranking today but some are still looking at it as a form of judging the quality of the website. It is like a ‘social status’ of a website. I believe it still important.
I think it still matters as PR are like social symbols that still wants to see by a lot of entrepreneur today.
Definitely, PR has decreasingly lost its value. It does however still like you said hold a website to a sort of social standard.
I used to concentrate more on page rank because for advertising purpose page rank is considered more
If it is still useful to you then that is all that matters. Its importance really depends on what you are using it for.
This is a good things only if you intend to sell links … most advertisers are looking for high page rank links .
Definitely, thanks for the additional input.
Awesome article. I have been trying to figure out the importance of page rank. After a lot of research I really couldn’t come to a conclusion. Great job, and very informative.
No problem. I can see how you have difficulty in making a decision. Even though PR has seem to have lost value over the years it is still important to some, in certain ways.
Great article …. i think that page rank help us on link building . Looking at page rank you can see if that website is highly indexed by google and if you must use it on you link wheel … i think this is the only thing that pagerank helps with .
So as Cris said , i stick on link wheels and backlink building because page rank is not so important to me .
Thanks, I appreciate your input. Do what works best for you.
Could you be any much more pretentious? I hope you didnt get paid to write this drivel.
I’m sorry you feel that way.
PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be.
Thanks, great definition. Nice way to explain it.
The simple answer is no.
I have 7 sites all with varying PRs and yet the site with a PR of 5 is below the fold on page 1 of G whilst my PR1 site is at number 1 on page 1. I think (like the alexa ranking) it is only important to people trying to sell their sites.
Yep, you have got it. I agree completely.
I find that PageRank’s not all that important – many pages with low pagerank appear higher in the search rankings than those with high pagerank.
It’s nice to have, though, and it does often mean a website is ‘better’ if it has a high pagerank, but it doesn’t mean a particular page is more relevant to Google when somebody carries out a search.
It is a decreasingly valuable tool indeed. It certainly is a way to hold sites to a type of standard, that people still wish to be measured by.
It seems that the page rank is not important that much for the top page in google, but still some of them sale links based on the page rank and most of the buyers of the websites concentrate on pagerank
Yep, you seem to understand how it works.
SEO really takes time and effort; there is no shortcuts. Patience is really a good virtue, just like what Neil said.
You have got it. Take the time to practice and learn it and you will be better off for it in the long run.
Neil,
In your post you gave an example that a PR3 site with 5 out bound links is better than a PR5 site with 1000 out bound links. This is confusing! content farms like Ezine Articles have millions of out bound links but still has a comparatively high PR and had great visibility (till Panda was launched). Is this the reason why they have started blocking massive content up-loaders from their site?
It could be, I am not sure why they blocked massive uploaders…
In general the less links a page has, the more PR that is split between those links.
Great post dude. A question about page rank.
What if i produce a wp theme with footer links containing the same anchor text back to my site but installed on unique domains as i give it away.
Will this increase PR?
I noticed Yoast getting stuck into GoDaddy recently about footer looks but i really don’t think they work if they have the same anchor text. Whats you opinion Neil?
They used to work really well, but not as much these days. They can boost PR, but not rankings as much as they used to.
Free WordPress themes are a great way to boost PR.
People seem to forget that Google PageRank doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a great force on the Internet, nor does it mean that you are reliable, or even that you *don’t* have a great deal of traffic.
Surely creating helpful, long-lasting, valuable content is more important than when Google updates?
You are correct… which is why I don’t put much weight on PageRank these days.
Neil,
Thanks for the awesome post and useful information. As always, you break it down in practical terms that are useful and understandable for a layperson such as myself, who is constantly learning. Your advice to focus less on PR and more on other things, for instance site authority, makes sense on so many levels. Awesome!