Just how important is Pagerank?

[cow194234]

This is just a quick question as I would like some insight from all you smart people out there in internet marketing land. How important truly is Pagerank.

I started a blog about one month ago today and it is now a PR 5, at least that's what Google PageRank Checker - Check Google page rank of any web pages says. Maybe that tool sucks I do not know, but I am curious.

What if at all benefits would I see from having my main site www.domain.com as a PR 5. Sure I would think google would index my other pages quicker but is that all I should really gain from this?

And also to people pay money for Back links from a PR 5 site like this if they are on the front page.

Thanks to everyone who can read and understand my newbness and for sure correct me if I have made any fatal errors in thought.

[cashcow]

I think it depends on what you want to do with your blog. PR certainly carries some weight if you want to sell it or sell advertising space on it. It might help you get link exchanges with people if you are so inclined. IMHO that's about all it is good for.

I don't know if it would help with indexing but I can say that I have low PR sites that get a lot more traffic then my high PR sites. Then again, i guess it all comes down to the keywords when it comes to traffic.

Lee

[intelinside]

PR does carry some weight but it won't gurantee you a stream of traffic because there are various other factors involve like the search volume of your targeted keyword, your on-page optimization, backlinks etc.

Also, you can use Google toolbar to verify the PR of your site but sometimes the toolbar PR takes time to reflect the actual standing.

[TomBond]

PageRank should be used as a guide, no more

[TechBlog]

well i dont think its of much importance nowadays..
India Broadband Forum pr0 and alexa 10k ... so u would understand it well now i guess

[dburk]

Hi cow194234,

PageRank is a very important distraction for my competitors. Many of them seem fascinated by PageRank and spend inordinate amounts of resources chasing it. I'm thankful for that, makes my job a lot easier.

[cow194234]

Here is a good question I just thought of.

Does Page Rank cause your adsense ads to be worth more per click? Like when advertisers set up their accounts do they say if they want to be show on higher PR sites then lower PR sites or is that not an issue.

I have not dealt with the advertising side of adsense (adwords I think) so I am not too sure on this.

[Jennysmithuk]

Google describes PageRank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank.

In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and Spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank.

[Max Ramocsai]

I wouldn't worry so much about the PR of your own site as opposed to the PR of the sites which you are getting links from.

The only time when the PR of your site is going to affect your income potential is when you are trying to flip it or sell ad slots.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Jennysmithuk

It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank.

In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and Spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank.

Hi Jennysmithuk,

I assume that your source for this was this Wikipedia article on PageRank.

I have to disagree slightly with this conclusion. While PageRank was a significant factor in SERP in the past, it now plays a very minor role. PageRank does not seem to be influenced much by relevance and PageRank does not influence SERP much either.

It's clear that relevance and visitor behavior play a major role in SERP, I see no evidence that it plays any influence in PageRank, as reported by the Google Toolbar. You can find many pages with little or no PageRank out ranking competitors in SERP. It's readily apparent that PageRank is purely a quantitative ranking with no consideration of quality.

SERP has it's own algorithm that considers more than 200 other factors besides PageRank. It seems obvious that some of these other factors consider the quality of incoming links, independent of PageRank, and weigh the importance of the qualitative factors significantly ahead of PageRank.

[hernan10]

PR5 in one month??

how much traffic ( unique visitors) do you get to your blog a day?
That is the most important factor when it comes to calculating pagerank.

[brp002]

If you are building a massive website as I am it is important to have a lot of PR pages. The more the better. You want to become I beastly website.

[ploked]

pagerank is important to some extent, but not as important as some make it out to be. it is good in that if you are trying to sell links or ad space to other people.

while having a high pagerank is nice, some people get too wrapped up in chasing pagerank rankings, they end up up focusing on that more than their actual keyword rankings. what good does a PR5 site do someone if it is not ranking for relevant keywords?

[dburk]

Hi masterGlen,

I have to say that is pure dogma. Way back in the days before spamdexing was common, you could have been correct in saying "PR measures the web page's importance". That is no longer true, it simply measures link popularity in a relative logarithmic fashion and has little influence on SERP.

An important page will usually have high PR, but the PR is not what makes it important. Many unimportant pages will have relatively high PR due to spamdexing.

[Kurt]

First, the PR you see in the Googlebar isn't the REAL PR, so this makes it harder for us the tell how much PR is a factor. What matters is Google's "internal PR", which we don't know, not the "visible PR" displayed in the bar.

"Historically", the more popular the search query, the influence PR had. However, weird, one of a kind search queries didn't rely on PR much, if at all, and this was even when PR was considered important.

While PR is generally a good idea, and the one that drove Google to be the most popular SE, PR isn't without flaws. One, it can be manipulated, and more importantly, it measures POPOULARITY, not QUALITY.

PR gives way too much advantage to older page. A new page may be the "best", but doesn't have time to get links, therefore it will be ignored by Google.

Google has been aware of this flaw for quite a while, so we should assume Google will place less importance on linkage over time as they develope new ways of ranking pages.

I wrote the following a few years ago, and it's still ahead of its time. Scroll down to the section called "People Rank" for some ideas on how Google (and other SEs) may use humans to rank pages:
SEO and SEM Kurt Melvin's Big Page of Search Engine Optimization Strategies.

[simplyjessie]

Originally Posted by hernan10

PR5 in one month??

how much traffic ( unique visitors) do you get to your blog a day?
That is the most important factor when it comes to calculating pagerank.

Traffic has nothing to do with PR. It is not even related to PR. Anyway, PR is just a certification or guide of your link-building efforts

[Jenie0109]

pagerank 4 is just enough for me...