Got a news last month from various seo experts that most notable brands have at least 5 or 6-figure monthly Google AdWords budget and don't rely on SEO. Lastly, there's no such thing as an 'authority' site when the chips are down.
i didn't understand the point when you say there is no "authority sites". What about the sites like about.com, wikipedia?
What I'm trying to point out is that the sites you've mentioned were not authority sites right from the get go. What makes them stand out is that they have an exceptional site structure, are farming PR by no-follow outbound links on the vast majority of their pages, AND cover a wide variety of subjects on different sub-domains that mostly have either been created or have been contributed to by guest authors / members. You could also add Yahoo Answers, MySpace, Twitter, and Digg, Ezine Articles, etc. to that list. Ever seen the phrase 'content is king'? Well those particular sites are filled to the rim with unique content. That doesn't necessarily render all of them an 'authority site' as in this day and age even the (albeit creative) average Joe can craft a megasite by allowing people to create viral content and market it for them as an added bonus. The gimmick of social media is purely based on granting 'the internet' a platform where people can either connect with eachother, or share their knowledge about X or Y subject. In essense most of these so called Social Media sites are nothing more than a glorified forum or BBS / Usenet if you go that far back, but your avatar doesn't convince me about the latter two.
That is a serious pearl of wisdom right there, if only more people would listen to that kind of advice. Google doesnt publicly disclose their algorithm for PR, and I highly doubt that they ever will. Its not the kind of information that Google would want the population to know, as it would only lead to manipulation of their system. Its as simple as this... create quality content, build backlinks naturally and over time (there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule!), and gradually you will earn a higher PR and traffic. End of the day, PR is just a number. Unless you are a site flipper, or creating a blog network, there is no real reason why PR should be your main focus. Instead, focus on high quality targeted traffic. 100 targeted visitors is always better than 1000 randoms who somehow ended up on your website.
# Each inbound link is important to the overall total. Except banned sites, which don’t count. # PageRank values don’t range from 0 to 10. PageRank is a floating-point number. # Each Page Rank level is progressively harder to reach. PageRank is believed to be calculated on a logarithmic scale. ---- Install Snow Leopard on PC