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PageRank 4 with Weak PR quality. What does that mean?

by Tim Alwell
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi there,

I'm new to learning SEO. I understand pagerank and I understand that PR=4 is pretty strong.

However, when I go to checkpagerank.net and punch in a PR 4 website that I wanted to try and guest post on, the backlink information returned by SEO majestic says that the PR quality is weak.

Can you make sense of this for me? I thought PR 4 was strong.
#pagerank #quality #weak
  • Profile picture of the author stelweb11
    I believe they mean that although PR is 4, the quality of links is not that good. If the site you are trying to guest post on belongs in a " good neighborhood ", it is worth pursuing. Else, it is still worth pursuing. But you just would not have that great benefit. You would still get some benefits, though. So , i say go for it.

    Note: By " good neighborhood ", i mean if the site is getting linked to from old and reputed sites, google deduces that it has good trust rank -- not just a high page rank. Page rank is not even half the story. It was a decade ago. Now there are more important primary factors that determine SERP.

    Trust rank matters these days more than ever.
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    • Profile picture of the author dewalds86
      Originally Posted by stelweb11 View Post

      I believe they mean that although PR is 4, the quality of links is not that good. If the site you are trying to guest post on belongs in a " good neighborhood ", it is worth pursuing. Else, it is still worth pursuing. But you just would not have that great benefit. You would still get some benefits, though. So , i say go for it.

      Note: By " good neighborhood ", i mean if the site is getting linked to from old and reputed sites, google deduces that it has good trust rank -- not just a high page rank. Page rank is not even half the story. It was a decade ago. Now there are more important primary factors that determine SERP.

      Trust rank matters these days more than ever.
      Apparently Google still uses the PR algo but they just dont publish it anymore.
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  • Profile picture of the author dronehawk
    Although I strongly believe Google no longer uses PR as a ranking factor, weak PR means that the backlinks pointing to your site are of poor quality.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by dronehawk View Post

      Although I strongly believe Google no longer uses PR as a ranking factor, weak PR means that the backlinks pointing to your site are of poor quality.
      Originally Posted by cbpayne View Post

      The PR4 is meaningless as the tool bar PR has not been updated in 2 yrs, so its PR could be really anything. .... its meaningless
      Originally Posted by PBScott View Post

      PageRank should be completely ignored these days, it is dead and often manipulated.
      Every single one of you should be fired from any SEO-related job.
      You are clueless.

      PR is used in ranking and is updated on a daily basis.

      It is not ignored by anyone who is a true expert on SEO,
      not is it ignored by google.

      So....what does that say about the lot of you?

      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author PBScott
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        Every single one of you should be fired from any SEO-related job.
        You are clueless.

        PR is used in ranking and is updated on a daily basis.

        It is not ignored by anyone who is a true expert on SEO,
        not is it ignored by google.

        So....what does that say about the lot of you?

        Paul
        Are you trolling?

        Brainfart?

        Are you trying to sell "high PR links"?

        Live in the now, toolbar PR needs to be ignored now. Why? Because Google IS ignoring it, and has been for 2 years now.

        If you are trolling....good troll, if you are not, then the small bit of faith I had in you is now shattered. I know you don't care how much faith I have in you, but I am telling you anyhow.

        Why even talk about Google's true PR, none of us have access to it, so it is useless to sit around imagining it.

        I update my comment to say Toolbar Pagerank, because I just realized I should have said that, but since you quoted the guy above me that did mention it, I am scratching my head.
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  • Profile picture of the author cbpayne
    The PR4 is meaningless as the tool bar PR has not been updated in 2 yrs, so its PR could be really anything. .... its meaningless
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    Toolbar PageRank should be completely ignored these days, it is dead and often manipulated.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Agree with PBScott - toolbar PR aka publicly visible Pagerank is something that you should ignore as much as you can.

    Paul rants in his usual way, but there's a point in there too. As far as we can tell Google still uses PR. While you should ignore the publicly visible PR, you should not forget that the mechanism is still there.

    OP, can you take something like Majestic or Ahrefs? Those metrics are much more useful than Google's publicly visible PR that was last updated in late 2013. It's been ages in internet years, and PR was pretty often faked back in the day too.
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  • Profile picture of the author NancyWhflare
    PR has been canceled by Google as a ranking factor for a long time, so the PR quality is weak, that maybe means your website has poor backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author cbpayne
      Originally Posted by NancyWhflare View Post

      PR has been canceled by Google as a ranking factor for a long time, so the PR quality is weak, that maybe means your website has poor backlinks.
      That is an absolute load of excrement! They still update it every day and factor it into the ranking of sites every day!
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by NancyWhflare View Post

      PR has been canceled by Google as a ranking factor for a long time, so the PR quality is weak, that maybe means your website has poor backlinks.
      You contradict yourself. If Google didn't use PR then "weak PR quality" wouldn't be something that anyone needs to bother with.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author dadamson
    If the PR is weak it generally means that you only have the PR score due to a small number of links which may be removed at any time, it is not established through a variety of links.

    There is a lot of debate about PR links and whether Google pays any attention to them. The fact is that nobody really knows how important they are.

    Google is very secretive and everything in this thread is based on assumption only, usually based loosely on results achieved in the past that may or may not have been influenced by PR or another factor.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by dadamson View Post

      There is a lot of debate about PR links and whether Google pays any attention to them. The fact is that nobody really knows how important they are.

      Google is very secretive and everything in this thread is based on assumption only, usually based loosely on results achieved in the past that may or may not have been influenced by PR or another factor.
      This is stupid. There is no debate. The PageRank of a page that a link is on definitely influences the strength of the link. However, nobody knows what the PageRank of any page on the internet is right now because Google stopped releasing the information publicly.
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