Nice FAQ!!! I translate that to meaning a possible completly new PR update might come with in a few weeks!!!
amen, I agree to that. Hopefully the updates will come more often so we can get a more accurate image of PR and the real rankings (Since they removed LivePagerank from the datacenters).
In his March 27 blog comment (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/) Matt Cutts said: Quote: "Q: “My sitemap has about 1350 urls in it. . . . . its been around for 2+ years, but I cannot seem to get all the pages indexed. Am I missing something here?†A: One of the classic crawling strategies that Google has used is the amount of PageRank on your pages. So just because your site has been around for a couple years (or that you submit a sitemap), that doesn’t mean that we’ll automatically crawl every page on your site. In general, getting good quality links would probably help us know to crawl your site more deeply..." Contrary to the many who say that "Pagerank doesn't matter", Matt pretty strongly suggests that better crawling by Google is at least in part a factor of your pagerank.
But still, it's the chicken and the egg story. What's important for crawling is having as many good links as you can. Side effect: Get higher PR. So yes, one could argue that PR is important, but I woud say links are important. PR for the sake of PR isn't.
I agree. And I think that's the point of the quote from Matt: "Getting good quality links" is important, because that will raise pagerank, which will induce Google to crawl your site better. So whether it's cause or effect, chicken or egg, focusing on raising one's pagerank pays off in Google with better crawling.
Links are more important. Having more links will not only give you better ranking in SERPs but also better chance of high PR. I feel the most important thing is securing good quality links (the more the better) that are highly related to the site.
I'd like to know from Google then whether many lower PR (adding up to the same in total) links get you crawled more frequently/faster/deeper than a few high PR links. I personally think the bots will drop by more often with more links. And because with more links you can spread them over more internal pages, you will probably get crawled deeper with more lower PR links as well. Just my hunch of course. And yeah, maldives has a point too, with more links you have a higher chance the total PR will increase more as well.
This thread serves as a good reminder Maybe it should be stickied, as alot of people are still confused as to what pr is all about
There has been no mention of external links to deeper directories as a means of getting clawled deeper. Is there any benifit to linking to sub pages from other sites? IE, I have a small tutorials section one level off the main page, does linking directly to the tutorials section from help to get the articles within crawled better? I thought it best practice to have all inward links point to the same page on any particular domain, is that correct? Newbie question I'm sure but I'm curious none the same.
Interesting point. Matt's exact quote was: "One of the classic crawling strategies that Google has used is the amount of PageRank on your pages." I wonder precisely what he means by "the amount ... on your pages" [plural].
Okay, so my question is... Do you concentrate on getting links to the home page or focus on spreading them around on internal pages? I know it isn't either or - just curious to hear ideas.
You get links to the pages you want to rank well and where you want the traffic, where the money is for you. For some sites that means the homepage only, for most of my sites (shops) that means almost none to the homepage but all to individual products or category sections if they're closely themed.
Just a thought.. I think what Matt is speaking of is what goes into the algo that makes a higher page rank not necessarily the PR seen on the toolbar itself. Public PR rankings unto itself does not guarantee higher SERPs for any given keyword, but some part of what goes into the PR algo is likely relevance to the subject matter or theme in the broader sense. Bottomline, IMHO, it is the finite elements of the algo taken into consideration to establish PR that drives most actions by Google; to include frequency of crawls by Gbot (Matt said BLs is one of the main elements for crawls).
I think everyone of you misquoted and misunderstood Matt's point. He did not say go out and get links on pages with good pr. What he appears to be saying is that if google is not finding links at other places to your site occuring not only in the past but the current as well, that your site is probably not interesting nor active. Remember the term natural organic links? In fact, I'm pretty sure it says somewhere buying high PR links diliberatly could backfire?