Over the last year it seems to me that PR has become increasingly meaningless, by that I mean that it is of little use to anyone in evaluating the "importance" of a website page. Could it be that Google have succeeded in making PR less relevant for SERPS optimisation? Thus making it harder for webmasters to manipulate SERPs? Anyone like to share some thoughts and views on this?
I think you are right. Search engine traffic to my site have not increased much even after PR of my site changed from 0 to 4.
I agree. The SERP shall make the PR as one of the major factor, but not only the keywrod. By comparing the keyword and PR to get the SERP is the best for me
I don't think you will notice the change in your traffic just yet. I think the update is still ongoing and things haven't truly settled down just yet. Of the sites which I have seen an increase of PR on (N/A to 4 on 2 blogs, PR1 to PR2 on another), traffic has definitely gone up. On the first 2, I am seeing about an average of 25% increase in traffic and will likely go from about 3000 uniques last month to about 3700 this month, not a major jump but it is still significant. These two sites are noticing daily uniques increasing from about 150 visitors a day to over 200 a day. If these numbers remain where they are now, I will hit approximately 5000 - 6000 uniques next month. The PR2 site, I've seen traffic jump from approximately 30 visitors a day to over 100 visitors just 1 day after the update. I also published new content on this site which may have affected the number of visitors, but I'm hoping that it continues. Still, since my SEO activities on this site, I've gone from a total of 8 visitors in a month, to over 400 so far this month and it's a pretty dominated niche that I've entered as an experiment and to refine my SEO skills. I do honestly think that the PR increases have given my sites a boost ... not as great as some would think, but enough for me to notice the difference.
i always thought pr would get me more traffic, with my old site its first pr update was pr5 and i dint see any traffic change even when it went down to pr3 i still got the same amount of traffic. i still try to get a hight pr cos it just looks good
If you are right, than Google people must remove this page... Visit it: http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html still if you believe PR is Meaning less than u must send a request to Google for removing this page, because of your deep research...
sigh.... no one seems to get this no matter how much it's said. your PR didnt just suddenly jump from 0-4 last weekend. therefore neither will your SERP. the reading you are now allowed to see is what was going on 8 - 12 weeks ago. so any SERP improvements to be seen from a PR improvement from zero to 4 would therefore have been made in the period before the 8 to 12 weeks ago cutoff point. so are you saying that in the period from more than 6 months ago to 3 months ago your traffic didnt rise? if so you should probably think about another job however that said, yes toolbar PR is unreliable and doesnt mean much any more.
That's a great quote ... I wonder what that would make google with its multiple pr10 pages But seriously, back to my original post. Google want to stop (or to be realistic "reduce") the manipulation of SERPs; maybe they are starting to succeed as the less experienced webmasters still focus on links from prX pages to try and boost pr of their web pages. With regard to comments that PR is normally calculated well before it is exported and thus changes in traffic need to be viewed historically ... agreed ... BUT ... I have many examples of sites I work on where PR and traffic are not correlated, e.g. higher PR did not equal higher traffic; lower pr did not equal lower traffic. The days of simple pr / traffic correlation are history.
oh agreed absolutely. but because the relationship is not simple anymore does not mean that PR is not at the heart of it.
i have a PR4 and very low traffic, there are sites ahead of me with lower PR and reciprical links as well
My Pages stayed the same PR but my Search engine Traffic increased about 40-50% since the last update, it did take me to a higher position on Google
PR is something like a reward Google gives you for working hard on your blog. Don't try getting it, it will come to you!
The fact is that PR has nothing got to do with the amount of traffic you will get and it's just a measurement of how many backlinks that you currently have. Unless of course if you intend to sell links, then PR comes as important.