Google's PR Don't Mean Squat

[Paul Hancox]

Hi Steven

I'm not personally worried about my PageRank because it's out of my control, anyway. But PR does play a role in RANKINGS.

Over on this thread...

How To Understand Google's Ranking Algorithm In 90 Seconds

... I basically said Google's algorithm can be boiled down to three elements:

RELEVANCE, AUTHORITY and POPULARITY.

The AUTHORITY element is determined by PageRank. But it can be trumped by RELEVANCE and POPULARITY.

You say nothing has changed, but does that mean you haven't added to it in the past 3 years? Knowing how much of a writing machine you are, I find that a stretch

But here's the real question: How much MORE traffic might you be getting, had your site remained at PR 4? If you should be getting double the traffic you're actually getting, then it IS making a difference after all.

[ramkarthik]

Originally Posted by Paul Hancox

But here's the real question: How much MORE traffic might you be getting, had your site remained at PR 4? If you should be getting double the traffic you're actually getting, then it IS making a difference after all.

Exactly what I tried to say in my previous posts in this thread.

You said it in a better way

[marketseeker]

Originally Posted by ramkarthik

It is nice to hear that. I had my blog's PR drop from 5 to 2 but I'm still getting good amount of traffic. But the question is, would it have been more if PR5 stayed?

And I also wonder why some people (including SEOs) advice others not to compete against a high PR site for a search term? They say it is better to go for a term which has less PR sites ranking in first page. If PR doesn't matter that much, why do they say so?

I believe there is still some value to PR but that is just my opinion.

not all seo's are afraid of PR, PR is not real anyway or not what you see anyway. PR diminishes in value over a period of time so new links are needed. something like a clickbank account, if you have a click bank account that you leave alone for a while and it has under $100 in it they will start to take $1 until it's gone.

[iblbuilder]

Google's PR is utterly pointless, and the sooner they scrap it the better it will be as thousands of webmaster will have to focus on the only thing that truly matters - converting traffic.

[AlexTampa]

PR means nothing for the front end of a site. But it does push through the site, and will mean a lot in long tail queries.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Paul Hancox

Hi Steven

I'm not personally worried about my PageRank because it's out of my control, anyway. But PR does play a role in RANKINGS.

Over on this thread...

How To Understand Google's Ranking Algorithm In 90 Seconds

... I basically said Google's algorithm can be boiled down to three elements:

RELEVANCE, AUTHORITY and POPULARITY.

The AUTHORITY element is determined by PageRank. But it can be trumped by RELEVANCE and POPULARITY.

You say nothing has changed, but does that mean you haven't added to it in the past 3 years? Knowing how much of a writing machine you are, I find that a stretch

But here's the real question: How much MORE traffic might you be getting, had your site remained at PR 4? If you should be getting double the traffic you're actually getting, then it IS making a difference after all.

Paul, that is true. The site has changed...a lot. Tons more content,
which just goes to show how little PR means. My content has increased,
my traffic has increased, and my sales have increased.

All while my PR has tanked from 4 to 1.

Get my drift?

And as far as how much more traffic I would have got?

No way for anybody to know as it's just guess work.

[grainosalt]

So as long as you had a high PR at one time you don't have to worry long term about the rank, right?

[Daniel Molano]

Steven,

You're right and at the same time wrong.

PageRank by itself will not help your rankings.

However, it's the link juice that PR passes what matters. Which is precisely why high PageRank backlinks are so powerful.

The thing that most people don't realize is that it also applies to internal links.

In short, the reason why some EzineArticles rank so high right after being published and then drop in rankings relatively fast is because they will receive a temporary PR6 backlink from the EZA home page itself.

That pretty much explains it. But yes, the PR of a page is irrelevant to the ranking of that same page.

- Dan

P.S: Authority sites of extremely high PageRank (PR8+) with the right internal linking patterns are unstoppable SEO wise.

[Ryan6]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

90% of my traffic comes from writing articles and submitting them to
article directories and other blogs as a guest author. Also from submitting
them to web 2.0 sites like Squidoo.

The other 10% comes from:

Forums
Safelists
FFA Sites
YouTube

That is essentially how I get my traffic.

Search Engines?

I can count my uniques from the SERPs on 20 hands.

If I relied on the SERPs, I'd be broke.

You have to remember though that the article submission sites and blogs get the majority of their traffic through Google, so they are helping to link up these connections for you and they also own YouTube which again sends traffic your way.

[HDRider]

I have a site that dropped all the way down to PR0 for some reason....however it is ranking higher than ever #2 spot in Google with 12,300,000 results, 7,690,000 in quotes

So it seems page rank doesn't matter

[Zach Booker]

Hey Steve,

The thing is let's say your site has a complete twin. All things the same if your twin site has a PR 4 and you have a PR 1 it'll out rank you, every time.

Now obviously you aren't going to have a twin. But if you're making all your money and getting all your traffic from one keyword than i'd raise your PR before someone comes a long with a higher PR and knocks you off. (Yes, it's pretty darn easy.)

If you're getting all your traffic from mainly long tail keywords than no need to worry.

If I were you though i'd go and spend a few hundred bucks and get some PR 6 links. (Or grab some freely assuming it isn't some spammed page.)

This will, in my experience, raise you in the serps a lot and also raise your own PR.

Zach

[Zanar]

Personally I think PR is a nice thing but like you say it does not matter as much as some people make it out.

It really bothers me the people who wont link exchange with a directly related great site with PR0, and set a certain min pr for link partners.

[Daniel Molano]

Originally Posted by Daniel Molano

Steven,

You're right and at the same time wrong.

PageRank by itself will not help your rankings.

However, it's the link juice that PR passes what matters. Which is precisely why high PageRank backlinks are so powerful.

The thing that most people don't realize is that it also applies to internal links.

In short, the reason why some EzineArticles rank so high right after being published and then drop in rankings relatively fast is because they will receive a temporary PR6 backlink from the EZA home page itself.

That pretty much explains it. But yes, the PR of a page is irrelevant to the ranking of that same page.

- Dan

P.S: Authority sites of extremely high PageRank (PR8+) with the right internal linking patterns are unstoppable SEO wise.

I'm quoting myself because I also forgot to mention that the the PR also determines how often the Google bot spiders your site.

[traceye]

What Daniel said is completely correct.

If you are talking about your own site, your rankings and how much traffic you get has no correlation to Page Rank. I know plenty of sites that compete for very competitive terms that are low PR.

However the link juice from a high PR site can help improve your sites rankings for the anchored link keyword you use on the other site back to your site.

I suspect this is what has happened with your site Steven and why you rank so well, you've been linking back to your own site from various different high PR domains such as ezinearticles, youtube, other article directories and so forth, you therefore rank for those 'keywords' you've used as your link text in your articles.

Whether you believe in the PR of the top level domain, or the PR of the page itself is what helps your position can be debated (and has been debated on this forum many times). I do know that if I get 1 link from a high PR page it will increase my rankings much faster and higher than many links from PR0 sites.

That's the only real use of PR in terms of rankings and traffic. Its the other sites linking to you. Makes absolutely no difference what your own site is.

[whateverpedia]

From what I can deduce my own experience, as well as from here and other forums is that having links from high PR sites just means more likelihood of the SE's finding your link.

My own experience:

2 sites, one in the car niche, one in dating.

Both launched at the same time.

Dating site packed with PLR (unedited), car site with rewritten improved quality plr.

Dating site not touched since launch, car constantly updated.

No linking to dating site, articles, comments, etc. for car site.

After 3 months:

Traffic to dating site 3-4 uniques a day: car site 200-250 per day.

Revenue form car site on average $15 a day, dating site hasn't made a cent yet.

PR of each site (As of 5 minutes ago)

dating site PR3, car site PR1

The PR is a machine's assessment of your page, that's it, nothing more.

As the OP said, Gargle is not the be all and end all of it. In fact there is a whole universe outside of the big G. All you have to do is look.

[Aaron Elliott]

The only thing I use PR for is to assess backlinks, otherwise who gives a $#@! about PR!

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

That's my point. Who cares what the PR is? If you just keep sending traffic
to the site, you'll continue to make sales and whether your PR is 5 or 7 or 0
it doesn't matter.

Pagerank even SEO doesn't matter if thats not how you get traffic but it still does in fact matter to most people because a drop in Pr indicates that you have lost links or link strength.

So for people relying on search positioning some of those links would probably include links with anchor text that allowed you to rank and in THEIR case the traffic would fall off and definitely matter.

[cashcow]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Pagerank even SEO doesn't matter if thats not how you get traffic but it still does in fact matter to most people because a drop in Pr indicates that you have lost links or link strength.

So for people relying on search positioning some of those links would probably include links with anchor text that allowed you to rank and in THEIR case the traffic would fall off and definitely matter.

Right, and for those people who lose PR but don't lose rank, it is probably simply because the people below you are still weaker than you in the links department, thus you still outrank them even though your PR has gone down.