enlighten you guys about directories

Exactly, it's for entertainment purposes only, with Google the only winner.

Every time PR is mentioned, Google gets more traffic, branding and advertisers.

 

Hmm, then I wonder why Google invests so much money, energy, time, and engineers into something that so many DPers declare is so unimportant. We need to let them know that they are wasting their time and money. Or...maybe they know exactly why they spend so much time, money, and computing resources calculating PR. I'm willing to "follow the money trail" in evaluating PR's importance or lack thereof.

 

I disagree. Pagerank is a way of webmasters to know if there site is performing well. The nice part about it is that it runs off a complex but very ingenious algorithm that bases its rankings off of quality links instead of quantity or views.


Though PR doesn't give much value, seeing a site with a high PR means its a good, respectable site because it has obtain links on other high PR sites.

And frankly, I'm okay with Google getting more traffic Its not like they are just going to disappear one day... Google will always have massive amounts of visitors and adding a few more because of what I did is so problem to me.

 

That has been the case in the past but there is just so much evidence nowadays that gooogle is simply using visual page rank as a way of discouraging gaming of the search engines and the selling of link juice. Tons of sites have lost their page rank but have not dropped in the SERPs

If you are a webmaster and are using the little green bar as a way of knowing your site is doing well then you need to get educated or get into a new line of work.

I would take a 10% increase in traffic over a +1 increase in page rank any day. Traffic and conversions is worth 99% page rank is worth 1%

 

I went up in the serps when i put up some signature links and it shows up in ma yahoo backlinks so it can't be all bad. Am new to seo but I have made considerable progress since i started.(Thanks to you guys) Already on page 1 for a very competitive keyword in less than 4 weeks. I might just start a new career as an seo expert!!! No one was born with knowledge, we all had to start somewhere/someday.

 

I think that there is a point in getting link from forums. You can also get many links instead of just one.

 

I agree that it seems pretty useless, But I have had some good working back links from directories in the past, I also think your sig plays a great role for backlinks.

 

No, not entirely what I meant. PR is good for something and sometimes that might be a quick check of how good a site is. I mean, if the NYT had a PR0 would you change your thoughts about that site...? A normal user wouldn't but I think a experienced webmaster would look at the site differently.

 

I assume NYT stands for New York Times??

Anywho, personally I wouldn't care if they had a PR9 or a PR0 it wouldn't change my view of the web site. I might think to myself now they have been caught selling links and got penalized, but other than that it matters little.

If the web site is useful and performs the task that it is intended to, in this case deliver news, then PR means nothing.

 

I dont know why people have to argue over things....I mean everyone has their own opinion and should be able to express it wrong or right. In this case Danielregwan did have some valid points which some of us can learn from. However I think directory submissions are still very important, as long as you submit to the right ones.

 

Exactly the right way to look at it - take PR with a pinch of salt.

@ Ben-AceofTech

Do you know the amount of sites I keep finding that are truly fantastic, but with low pagerank? Tons.

So many naff sites but with high PR of 5 or 6, all that means is someone has spent their life dong link swaps - PR is not any sign of quality or authority at all. These are the type of cheap sites that webmasters own and who aren't in a million years going to sink 1000's into their development:

Template sites
Adsense driven
Cheap directories
One page sales sites
Classifieds
Hobby/Personal/Hero worship websites

So the above will never be anything of quality, I've seen it too many times, all the "Yeah, we will take on the world" talk, and it never happens.

I'm shocked so many fall for what is a clever marketing tool for Google, they actually get sucked in that some green set of pixels, rushed to their site and said "Wow, you are cool" - it's crazy. Noone knows how Google grades websites, it's a closely guarded secret and anyone claiming insider knowledge of anything above what Google tells them is clearly a nut.

To prove my point about how Google has sucked everyone in, just look at this forum alone. The toolbar is worthless and many including myself don't trust it, and have even removed it as it influences linking decisions a bit too much for my liking.

Nope, I prefer to judge a site myself and I don't need Google telling me or making my mind up who I should link to. Yes, it is nice and attractive - even exciting to see the next level of green and be rewarded in some tiny way - but that's all it is.

The only ones that worship the green are the ones making a living from it. It has a name and it's:



The Foolbar

 

Good point. Safe to say the reason he got such a violent reaction to his post was the wording, not the content. When anyone, especially a new entry, enters a forum and titles a thread "Enlighten you guys about {insert topic}"... it implies that he is here to educate the unenlightened.

The old saying comes to mind that the difference between rape and rapture is presentation.

Whether his points were correct or not, suggesting that the members needed to be enlightened would evoke similar responses in almost any forum. If he didn't want a firefight he'd have done well to employ a less pejorative tone. If he did want one, appears it worked.

 

A number of posters here and in other threads have stated their beliefs that the toolbar PR is manipulated by Google (for various reasons) and does not represent the "real", internally-kept PR that Google actually uses.

That's an interesting theory, maybe true, maybe not. But only Google can say yes or no concerning the truthfulness of that claim. Does anyone actually have any hard, empirical evidence that the toolbar PR is artificially manipulated by Google, but not so for the "real" PR? Not opinions, but hard evidence. (No argument intended here; it's a sincere question.)

 

@ Jim4767

There's no great secret Jim, it's obvious that where a system exists, people will attempt to exploit it. Google knows this and punishes the offenders by dropping their serps position. It's common knowledge that it goes on and it's the same for the Alexa toolbar system.

Who's going to have evidence - the only ones with the hard evidence would be the scammers themselves, and their not going to hold their hands up to it on a public forum are they. Not that we need evidence because we know it goes on.

 

Very good point. A PR is a PR and it shouldn't mean much. My overall point is that some sites that deserve high PR's don't have them and some sites do. Some sties that shouldn't have a PR do. A PR is like an Alexa rank, it gets you no value but is a small token in seeing a website.

What I mean by this is that if you don't have a PR there is nothing wrong, but if you do have a PR its a good sign of growth and development, and your goal shouldn't be to obtain a higher PR but more hits, views, and impressions.

 

Jim, while I cannot provide fool proof exist that PR manipulation does/does not happen, I assume you have read the post made by Matt Cutts in regards to ShyBoy's -60 Serp penalty:

 

I think Matt Cutts has talked about it before, I might look for some quotes later on. I guess there is probably no 'direct' proof that taking away or reducing visual page rank leaves a different page rank in google's system because nobody really knows if there is any real relationship anymore (or even if there was) between page rank and serp's. But what I do know as a fact and you can check with your sites or others sites that have page rank zero and are well established with lots of backlinks. They can still rank well in the SERP's for competitive keywords. So following that logic, then yes there is proof (albeit indirect).

 

Yeah, I recall what you're referring to and will have a dig around for the articles. Nonetheless, the comments made also refer to the evident penalisation of this.

 

Some nice replies, thanks.

BTW, my post was asking about cases of the toolbar being "artificially manipulated". It may be just semantics, but I would not consider a Google penalty (say, for selling links for PR juice) to be artificial manipulation. That would be, in my opinion, a legitimate algorithmic tweak to keep PR meaning what Google wants it to mean.