Is Google PR still useful?

[carlos123]

This topic has probably been beat to death but I have been out of it respecting keyword anything for a while and have been busy with other things so I am not up to speed on what has been happening.

I am doing some keyword research and wanted to evaluate my competition using the relative PR strength among the top ten sites to get some idea (albeit rough) of the strength of these sites.

But my SEO for Firefox plugin no longer shows any PR at all. I've also read that Google shut down public API access to PR.

I've Googled and Googled, searched here, and just can't make any progress on figuring out how to tell PR any longer (in a way that is convenient like SEO for Firefox used to do and NOT, NOT one site at a time).

Anybody here got any suggestions as to how to get SEO for Firefox type functionality going again and whether PR is still a useful indicator of the relative strength of a site?

Carlos

[Fazal Mayar]

try using chrome and use seo quake but yes PR is useful and an important metric for a website but not as much as we all think

[carlos123]

Thanks so much for your input Fazal!

Chrome and SEO Quake did it. I can see the PR's all lined up under each SERP result again.

Just the way I wanted it.

Carlos

[charmi2008]

yes these are best for link building. PR stills works.

[Kris79]

PR still works but there are things that gaining more value in SERPs:
- content
- content
- domain authority

You can use PR as indicator of how strong the competition is but remember:
- PR showed in toolbars is relatively old, Google is not updating it very often

Better way of measuring PR of sites is to look on mozRank, which is much more frequently updated.

[sakct]

I can see PR in firefox using seoquake, probably you need to remove it and install it back. PR is very useful.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by Kris79

PR still works but there are things that gaining Better way of measuring PR of sites is to look on mozRank, which is much more frequently updated.

Hmm...if the only PR that counts is that which Google gives a site and if they don't make that PR indication available to anyone through their API any quicker or more than would normally be available to tooks like SEO Quake why would mozRank do any better than any other such tool?

The only update frequency that means anything is how frequently Google updates the PR. Which all tools have equal access to if they have any access to it at all.

Carlos

[clerk master]

Google seems to be updating the Public PR like crazy all of a sudden, & yeah Its very useful! Highly recommended for me!

[ConnerD]

PageRank is an important factor. It is one out of 200 signals but still it is an important one for a large number of queries. We must not get obsessed with it but we must neither ignore it. Additionally we should also take into account that the Real PageRank values are constantly recalculated and as a result the values that we see on the toolbar are old and not very accurate. Still when the PageRank Toolbar update is recent, they can give us a clue on whether our link building campaign is working.

[kevinzeo]

Sure,PR is useful,the firefox plugin seo quake works.

[Matt Baker]

I don't mind PR when doing link building.. I just keep in mind that a link is a link.

[RevSEO]

My guess is that you have been temporarily banned because of too many queries to Google by the plugin.

If you were pulling in the top 10 and doing quite a few searches Google will temporarily ban your IP because it thinks you are requesting PageRank and
other Google info stuff too quickly.

As far as is Google PageRank still important? Yes, but when it comes to
linkbuilding. Don't waste time obsessing over your websites own PR, but
rather when finding backlinks PageRank is a good indicator of overall
linkjuice and potential domain authority.

[papachina]

Yes PR is very useful it will show the popularity of website.