That's right! I have been experimenting with a few sites and it seems that a high PR is a secondary factor for good Google rankings. The most important factor seems to be themed backlinks. So for example, if Site A (with PR 5) has 100 backlinks with anchor text "dog training" and Site B(with PR 1) has 200 backlinks with anchor text "dog training" - guess which site will rank higher for the search term "dog training" - Site B!!! Factors like Page Rank, number of indexed pages, age of website, keyword inclusion in url, etc etc fall secondary to themed backlinks.. Well, this is my observation.... and I am no SEO expert. Pls share your thoughts/experiences...
Are you trying to say that PR has something to do with SERP? PR has nothing to do with and if ever it is one of the factor, I assure its not the secondary factor as what you are saying,. from Matt Cutts's blog:
All I am saying is that I have seen low PR sites rank higher than high PR ones in the SERPs... Just an observation. Whereas I have read/heard almost everywhere that PR is the primary factor used in SERPs..
PR is not the basis of serp, it will still fall on how you optimize your site whether on and off page concerning with your keywords,. Like using your target keyword as your anchor
You are right, PR really has very little, if anything at all, to do with your SERPs. It is very common for low PR sites to outrank higher ones. In fact you can do a search for any keyword or phrase and see for yourself that there is no correlation of PR to search result positioning. If you have been reading that PR is the primary factor used in SERPs I doubt that you read it in this forum as the topic has been discussed quite a bit and the general consensus among those who know is that it is not much of a factor at all.
My site dropped from PR4 to PR0 and now I'm listed in first page for this keyword : "computer software". Try this search computer software. My website : www.trybestsoft.com How can I explain that ?
Well that i allredy knew this something new ? Hope all the stupid people that make threads to get higher pr understand that is useless all that mthers is Traffic and Rankings
You can explain it by your keyword density and the keywords that appear in your backlinks as well as the surrounding text of those links. Your SERP has nothing (or very very little) to do with your PR
Page Rank is more like a baby toy used to keep seo babies busy Google uses a hidden factor known as "trust rank". This is something which decides the real rankings of your website. It includes various factors as :- 1) SEO History of domain 2) White hat or Black hat techniques used in the past 3) Balance between off-page and on-page optimization We have even seen websites with <0 pr ranking on top of search engines.
I have seen (more than once) a brand new site rank on the first page within hours of the site being created. Of course that would be for a low competition keyword/phrase, but still yet.....
The myth continues ... Let's see what is said about the PR-SERPs link by the only ones who really know — that is, Google itself, not webmasters with experiments and anecdotal observations. The quote is from Google's ©2008 explanation of how they arrive at search engine results. Here's the relevant quote from Google on the PR-SERPs link: "Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results....Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results." They say it twice, lest we miss it: Higher PR —> Higher SERPs I can hear the contrary replies already, pointing out that PR is "just one of many variables". We all know that. We also know that Google seems to make PR a massively important variable: Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results." The link is: http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html
Hello Jim, I am sorry to disagree with you or anything that has been written about this subject, but I go by what I see. When I routinely see PR0 PR1 etc sites ranking higher than PR6+ sites I can only assume that PR is NOT the primary factor. The proof is in the pudding regardless of what anyone says or writes
Understood. Those are the anecdotal type of examples I referred to. The key is to look more deeply into why some lower PR pages outrank some higher PR pages. I have experienced a good example — I have a PR5 page with thousands of backlinks that is occasionally outranked for a certain keyword in the SERPs by a PR3 page with only three backlinks! How could this happen? Well, some quick detective work showed that they have the targeted keyword in the URL, I do not. Take away important underlying differences like that, thereby equalizing the playing field, and I offer that Google's published statement will always be applicable, that is — "Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results....Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results." http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html
I did a test myself. I came up with a list of 20 keyword/phrases - did a search - and then compared the top 20 results and their PR values. Not one time in all these searches was there any ordering of PR values. The PR values varied a great deal and were not in any order whatsoever.
My guess is that the site with PR3 has backlinks with the keyword as the anchor text. Themed backlinks is the industry jargon, I believe. And that is exactly what my first post said. Themed backlinks seem to be the primary reason in Google rankings. I read about it in a report first, and did a bit of research on my own. And I am pretty convinced that PR has little to do with SERPs