I think the issue is this: actual Page Rank is very important but no one but Google has access to it. Toolbar Page Rank is outdated and therefore is not likely the same number that Google is using to help rank you in the SERPs. Page Rank itself is absolutely important; toolbar Page Rank is not. Don't get me wrong, I get the same pleasure in seeing my sites increase in PR as anyone but I'm not a link seller and I'm not fooled into thinking that it is the most important factor in SERPs ranking. I'll add here that I think the best possible move that Google could make would be to discard public Page Rank altogether. It serves no purpose except to aid link sellers and mislead webmasters into thinking that building PR is their goal. PR and SERPs ranking go hand and hand but your focus should be your ranking, not some abstract number that none of us really understand.
The concept of PR is still used by google. A link from a page, that itself has strong links, does benefit.
I won't say PR is useless; it has some value; but only because people attribute so much value to it. A site with higher PR is worth more than a site with lower PR. Next to that, PR has only minor value; I don't attribute too much value to it, though, I do attribute a little bit value to it That doesn't means I'm a PR addict who buys links to upgrade PageRank anymore. (I must admit I ever did that lol - but I don't do that anymore. Just stupid)
That would sure cut down on the number of posts on Digital Point. Yahoo! seems to do fine without it. MSN too.
Major buyers and sellers stopped using PR as a value gauge a long time ago. Actual backlinks is the real focus because it's the only measure of sustainable traffic. Not far from the truth at all!
PR is worth a lot if you are in the co-op. People who start these threads need to keep that in mind, at a minimum. (There's plenty of other reasons to respect PR.)
Haha, not much competition in the free bible market? I've found a new niche! I'll admit I get excited when I see a big jump! I don't know what constitues "newbie", but my first programming class was in '98 or '99
Mine was in 1965 at the Univ. of Pittsburg. We studied the "MAD" programming language (Michigan Algorithm Decoder). Any old-timers here remember that one? The university computers were the old monstrous tape reel type and took up nearly a floor of a skyscraper. An average desktop today could do more than that whole 1965 computer system combined. BTW, we had no keyboard input. The input was via punch cards fed into a card reading machine. Times have changed!
I think you'll have a hard time finding anyone here old enough to chat about those good old times I learned Pascal as my first language - I thought that made me old! We did use keyboards though and the year was closer to '95 then '65
Interesting comment by Matt Cutts on June 23, 2007: "PageRank is fundamentally about the hyperlinks that people on the web create. All those people creating links help Google formulate an opinion of how important a page is." http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-role-of-humans-in-google-search/
I am told that it accounts for about 50% of the alogorith. So while a low pr page can sometimes trump a high pr page, all else being equal it still helps your rankings a lot.
My 2 cent. PR is useless. I was on #1,#2 and #3 place less then 6 days on google. Just set up blog 2 days before... No PR what so ever...This is 1 week and my adsense earning is looking good..I still have #1 and #7 spot...But I tell you, google playing w/that #no positioning...I was checking it and it was changeing about every 6 hrs. Like I was dropped to #4 and #6 places but never lost #1. That was a good week and half. Also I'm #1 w/another keyword w/my zimbo- squidoo site combination. cw
PR is really useless as it is mainly based on no of back links! Suppose if you have a link from PR4 site(A) you may get PR4 (B) in the next update provided that the link is the only one external link from the site A and that is to yours site! So easily any one can gain PR in a few days I think PR is used in Serps only for some keywords and not for keywords "How To install a wordpress" like this
well for me pr is money and has nothing to do with serps. I sell text links and high pr sites and make money. I also make money by getting high pr for other sites. My blogs do very well in google with a pr 1 and 0.
1980 and Basic on an Atari400 8 bit 6502 CPU here. I had a keyboard but we didn't have hard drives back then only the 5 1/4 floppies. In 1984 I started working in PL/I and Cobol on a System/38 mini my uncle bought for his medical billing company. In 1988 and I lucked into a job at IBM coding C and RPG on AS/400's (before I got moved to the OS/2 project as a C++ GUI developer).
Pagerank is the base of Google ranking algo. But Google made public only one aspect of Pagerank that is its number. I think that number hardly contributes towards ranking of sites. There is some inside story which Google will not make public. And what we know is just a marketing aspect