Google page rank is a totaly useless piece of junk

[sandbox]

Google page rank - sounds like a good idea, but in reallity is totaly pointless. (IMHO)
I have a newish site and have been doing a few experiments with static/dinamic pages, linking in to some and generaly seeing what works. This is what I,ve found - Highest page rank on my site PR5 on three pages

My test blog about 6 entries pretty much neglected
Login page to members area members page is also pr5 and it's behind login
site map

Best performing pages in terms of search engine referals, traffic and most inbound links

One of my best articles about 10-15 views a day 4-5 relavent links PR1
Home page most all inbound links are for this page (much more than any other page) PR3

My point is there appears to be no connection whatsoever with inbound links, traffic, and google PR. I have no links outside my site to the blog hardly any content, it gets no traffic yet google give it PR5?
I used to use the PR toolbar thing as a very rough guide to a pages worth, you know some idea of traffic link popularity etc but not anymore, it's totaly worthless as a webmaster tool. I use alexa now to get some idea about a sites worth (I know it's a very blunt instrument but it's better than GPR)
A little green bar that tells you how good a webpage is on a scale of 1 to 10 sounds like a good idea and it's one a lot of people have bought into but it just does'nt work.... There has to be something better?

[iatbm]

alexa is even more worthless !

[maldives]

Ranking procedure su**ks I agree but, PR is still an important thing for any serious webmaster ;)

[Komodo Tale]

It's not that PageRank is broken or does not do what it is supposed to. It is that too many people do not understand what it is.

The factors that make up PageRank are used in Google's ranking algorithim, but each factor has its own individual weight or influence on the total ranking equation. Also, there are many more variables, each with their own weight or influence, that are part of the overall ranking algorithim.

http://www.fund-development.com/blog/smatterings.html

_

[sandbox]

Interesting article but it just doesn’t add up.
I have a PR5 blog index and PR5 members page behind a login, the blog has no link juice because it's got no links from anywhere accept within my site. It's got unique content but very little of it. It's only been up a couple of months and it's PR5 that's not logarithmic it's random!
I think that so many webmasters buy into page rank that it's like the kings new clothes syndrome. Complain about a low rank for a good page and your just a winger, get a high PR for rubbish page and you shut your mouth and start selling links?

[tracker]

I have to agree with sandbox here. At times PR is almost randomly applied - for example, my contact page (which just has links to php e-mail submission forms) has a higher page rank than my homepage - even though it is my homepage that is the only one with outside links to it.

However, I've also noticed that the sites which are doing better than me in the Google rankings do have higher PR than me - so it is possible that this variation occurs only at the lower PR levels. By the time you get to a 7, I don't see how that could happen with a contact page.

And Alexa is worse. IMHO.

[jhonson]

I agree Google PR is a totaly useless. One of my website's links page and article pages has got a PR of 5 and these useless pages rank no where on google but the homepage of this particular website is PR 0 and that page ranks #3 on a highly competative Keyword.