PR is a frustrating concept. On one hand, I don't want to waste time worrying about it but on the other hand there are many advertisers that treat PR as the definitive measure on how much to spend for advertising for a website.
Have you ever tried sticking a butter knife in an electric socket?? Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer... Everyone here knows Google never answers webmaster's requests anyway -- you almost made me fall out of my chair laughing. Are you really serious ??? Well, do yourself a favour and keep sticking that nose up Google's rump because that's one less person I have to worry about competing with even though the sites in your signature are in one of my main niches - guitars. btw, you got any PRS Dragon's for sale? I can sell you one for $38K, oh but I forgot, you Google lovers can't even afford an Agile PRS copy... oh, and just so you don't think I'm pulling the wool over your eyes, here's just a few of my collection... Follow their rules and stay poor. That's the way they want you. Poor and broken.
Toolbar pagerank in some ways has devolved into a method to mess with webmasters heads IMO. G is fat & happy whenever someone buys a PR7 link from a site that barely gets any traffic. Just makes their job easier. But what would happen if people start buying direct advertising based on the traffic the site can deliver (en masse). They might get a little nervous. That traffic would bypass adwords, adsense, etc. Just a thought.
You're right... Anyone here ever wonder why text-link-ads.com is a PR7 site and "supposedly" Google frowns on buying and selling of text links ??? OK, so bloggers or webmasters who (God Forbid) sell links on their site - get penalized, but TLA who is a broker of link sales is PR7 ??? Wonder why ??? Have a look at the results from this Google search here Look at the "sponsored links" on the right hand side.... hmmm... Google doesn't want webmasters selling links but it's OK for text link brokers to advertise in Adwords. Seems like a double standard to me and I hate double standards, I hate "Do what I say, not what I do".. F that...
There weren't any changes in my PR, but what I have seen that the traffic from google has started to increase over the time, and this is what Matters I suppose.
Traffic is all that really matters unless you're trying to sell text links but considering that most webmasters are getting wise to the fact that buying links is a suckers bet, the importance of PR will be diminished over time.
Brilliant! I'm in the process of moving away from Google altogether as well. I finally figured out its pretty pointless trying to get people to click ads worth 0.01 cent or even 0.10 cent. Far better sell direct advertising at reasonable rates that benefit both parties for long term gain.
No, it's a Pewter Quilted Top 1984 Paul Reed Smith C22 custom but I do have 11 Les Paul's at last count You're absolutely right. Advertising is about "brand recognition" not about conversions. Adwords customers are the bottom of the barrel as far as advertising is concerned. Could you imagine if the car dealers who advertise on television during the local news demanded conversions from their advertising? Hell no, it's about getting their brand out their and into people's living rooms and minds. Google Adsense is an abortion and it makes a website a whore-house for the lowest level advertisers. If you read some of the SEM (search engine marketing) blogs, you'll see, those bottom feeders don't give a rip what they're promoting from the clickbank catalog, they don't care if consumers are getting a fair shake, all they care about is being able to post nice little screenshots of their earnings. Adwords/Adsene brings out the worst in advertising and Google could care less if they are showing illegal ads for prescription drugs, scams, schemes, etc - until they are fined, like they were in 2007 for internet gambling ads in the system. I have to use the ad filter in Adsense at least 3-4 times per week to keep shady ads off my sites. Oh, and isn't it great how Google Adsense TOS, clearly states that Adsense ads are not allowed to be shown on sites with pharmaceutical content ? Well, wtf is this... http://www.reallyfirst.com/Pharmacy/ I personally reported that site several times over the last year just to see if Google really responded to complaints. Well, a year later, the page is still there.
Dont worry about page rank too much unless you are trying to sell ads space just make site better for the next page rank update.
I've gone from a PR5 to a 3 over the past six months, and I have friends that have been hit even worse. I've learned not to sweat it because there is nothing you can do really. I did make a lot of my links nofollow just as a test, but i doubt it will do much.
I'm beginning to thing that this PR update was really a downgrade. I didn't have one single site in my portfolio go up and most of my PR4-PR5 sites all lost a point. Does anybody think maybe Google is trying to re-evaluate their algorithm and make it harder to get a PR4 or PR5+ ???