I think to an extent yes PR is a bit overhyped. A lot of people are obsessed with PR tend to concentrate only on getting higher pagerank for their site and ignoring the other more important aspect like SERPs which is more important than PR.
When you have hype folks expect performance, and as it has been nearly impossible to find synchronized Data Centers displaying the same PR for the same site In my opinion without accurate stats and data PR, will not have total support, therefore if the stats are off the mark, the whole PR scenario becomes questionable
if you are trying to rank high in Yahoo or MSN, then PR is overhyped. but if you are aiming at Google (which probably 99% of us are), then it isnt.
Perhaps PR is more a judgement of on-site optimization. It certainly doesnt give a measure of how much money or traffic a site gets but it certainly helps to convert and gain 3 way link exchanges since everyone wants PR. Its hard to avoid judging sites when Google so big and they're the ones saying "this site is worth 6/10". You have to think that it adds to SERPs somehow.
it seems that getting PR in not a very difficult thing... my sites got PR (mostly PR 3) today.. without much efforts..
IMHO, PR impact is hyped for SERP or traffic purposes. However, if you plan on selling reviews on your blog or getting paid per post or selling your site, ONE of the factors commonly looked at is the PR of your site. Other factors are technorati rankings, feedburner subscribers, Alexa ranking, etc.
when we talked about PR then we talked the myths of Google and when we talked about SERP then we talked about visitors
YES I believe you are right to question the Page Rank system Page Ranking is only a technology to rank sites according to a set mathematical criterea If you look at the search results you will see that many sites that are listed high and therefore probably have a high page rank, actually have little or no real content, but are instead just page after page of links Unfortunately the Page Rank system has simple thrown up loads and loads of sites with no content, which are just link farms or link directories All it takes is one change in the Page Ranking system and suddenly sites that were listed high drop down the listing by the thousand For new webmasters I believe the answer is to concentrate on original unique content ranther than loads and loads of links pages
Completely overhyped. Many link traders (sellers and buyers) are obsessed with links from high PR pages and not with links from theme related pages. I PR dissapear many sites are condemned to dissapear too.
In my opinion yes Pagerank is very over-hyped. But its a nice thing for some webmasters to get a decent one.
Slightly overhyped but definitly a step in the right direction. It is still only a small factor in serps. If you have a PR8 site that is about engines you will not rank well for coffee. If your PR8 engine site is not a content-full as a PR5 engine site you might still outrank it. PR should be looked at as a "bonus", if your site is talking about xxx then google'll bump it up a few positions for a higher PR. I suggest there should be a hybrid PR coming out soon. Something like . . . 1/4 G PR 1/4 being included in DMOZ 1/4 Alexa 1/4 Yahoo Backlinks (they are the most complete) What this would do is gather your web site's importance from 4 sources instead of just 1. Then include this rank as a bonus, like PR is now. This would be good for the internet.
I think that for a while I was overly focused on PR. I did lots and lots of directory submissions. PR jumped to a 5. Traffic stabilized at about 1,800 page views daily. Then I realized that I was neglecting other important aspects of marketing the website. So I undertook a niche email campaign that I described in this thread — http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=222832& Well, the result was an immediate (and sustained) increase in traffic by about 35%. And this despite the fact that I dropped from PR5 to PR4 in the recent update. The message? — PR went down, but traffic went up because I stopped being a “one-trick pony†(meaning my earlier obsession with PR) and got busy with tried-and-true ways of drawing traffic to the site.
I think it is over-hyped. It's a useful indicator and should be used in tandem with all other available information, statistics etc.
The problem is it gets manipulated by webmasters! Thus google have downgraded its importance! Notting
yup, for the past 3 years, there are no 'main rules to play'....heck, even this year will be the 'myspace n youtube' year i guess, and i'm predicting submition services will peak , directories is booming...i don't see if people ever bother about PR anyway, at least not from an internet marketeer perspective where we spend most of our time focusing on.