Page Rank Update???

In the 5 years I have been in this business, I have found that the only thing predictable about Google is their UN-PREDICTABILITY

Caryl

 

Precisely, Caryl.

 

The big question is, are Google keeping their search results relevant? With all this stuff about the PR not being updated or backlink results not being updated are they still keeping up to date with their search results?

 

I fear that Google may have finally come to the realization that the less real information there is available - the more difficult it is to "game" their search results.

Since last June, Google started reporting rediculous link: and site: results and PR reporting started to become more sparce.

I think the future will only yield more of the same Mis-Information.

Caryl

 

Others disagree, I know, but I find Google search results to be as relevant as ever. What is no longer relevant is, as McDar says, the information that webmasters find useful... useful in their attempts find methods that will leapfrog their sites over their competitors' sites.

 

oh, stop it, i keep clicking on these pagerank update threads just incase ... but no .... damn google and all its mightyness!

 

Surely then their is a niche in the market for those like Caryl who test everything and know better than others about what makes the search engine results tick?

You should be a millionaire by now Caryl or are you....

 

oh, you know it $$$$$$$$$ -

Caryl

 

They definately need to pick up the pace.
I've seen official sites who were an absolute #1 on google, disappear to the 2nd or 3rd page

 

I could not agree more. It makes all the sense in the world from Google's perspective. I am sure that they did not create the PageRank algo so webmasters can profit from it. It has been common knowledge for a few years now that some SEO affiliated webmasters are selling links based on PR value. This is a real crap shoot for a uneducated link buyer. Let's say you go and blindly sign up for a bl from a PR 8 sitewide link ($1500 to $3000) then Google dishes out a penalty for selling links for the purpose of manipulating PR. Who do I complain to? I'm out 3 grand??

I don't actually buy links and never will. But I have some sense of what fees are being charged. It's absolutely insane...on the chance that you MAY receive a PR boost.

Minstel, I will agree with you that the PR toolbar has many other uses. As long as you install it for these reasons, yes it is a helpful tool. I have to agree with mcdar and you that Google has just taken away the ability to sell and market products based on the Google PR value. I agree with that.

What I strongly disagree with is the buying and selling of these links to boost PR. I will admit that I once did this in the interest of keeping up with the Jone's. I learned quickly that artificially inflating your PR value is a dangerious game, of which I do not want to play.

 

Exactly!

There's far more things you could be spending your time on like website content. There's a million and 1 other marketing strategies you can use to attract visitors to your site that doesn't involve the search engines. You'll find that if you build a popular site then people will start linking to it because they want to link to it. Go on... use some ingeniuity

 

Homer, I agree buying/selling links to for their PR benefit isn't a good idea.
However, that doesn't mean that I disagree with buying/selling links.
If I'm running a good quality site on a certain subject (that's of interest to many people) then it would be a good investment to buy links on certain high quality sites. Those links would be to drive traffic to my sites from the others' (they might have the benefit of increasing PR but that would be a side benefit). If a website had relevant traffic (thus making a lnk on it valuable to me) then I'd consider buying link space regardless of that sites PR.
But, it's mainly only SEO's who will think like that. The normal (I use the term loosely) webmasters out there will look at their PR and if offering links may well base the price on that PR. I'm not interested in what PR a site has, I'm interested in what traffic it can send me. It's likely that a high PR (>7) will be able to send me more traffic than a low PR site - but this is not necessarily the case all the time.

 

Thats a good point Lawrence

Sponsoring a site is always a good way of obtaining some traffic from their site.

 

Yes I agree jlawrence. The big question is How does Google determine the difference. You are describing a scenerio that is 'for the right reason' (to promote) I describe a scenerio that is 'for the wrong reason' (inflating PR).

How does Google determine the difference whilst dishing out a PR flatline penalty?

 

Just thought you guys might like to know that after calling the boys at Google again, they aggreed to do an update.

 

It is rumoured that G places more weight on relevant links. How they do that I don't know.
But at the end of the day, we all want more traffic.
What I'm saying is go after links with the sites that can/will send relevant traffic - pay for those links if you want. But paying for links on irrelevant sites won't send you any traffic might well be picked up by G somehow and they may dillute the PR passed to you - thus you could be wasting your money.

It'd be interesting to try and prove this. If I ever get a high PR site, then I may try and test this theory. Setup a link from a high PR site to a brand new site on a completely unrelated subject and see how much PR is passed - that'll show if relevancy is taken into account. We all know that a good PR6 link (on a page with few out bound links) should give you at least a PR4, but what would it give an irrelevant site.

 

I guess you have seen this search which attempts to show relevancy

~yourkeyword

so ~fish show aquarium, goldfish highlighted etc

 

Interesting. I have never seen that search. But should I even try it since my aquarium site is burried in Google brand sand.

 

WebGazelle - some where here in DP is a thread which gives a link to a video of some google man talking to a uni. about, you guessed it GOOGLE. My angle was amongst the "look at how good we are techno babble" there was quite a strong hint that links from relevant text are what is or will be soon required for good serps, using evedience similar to the search above. The term they used for the presentition was cuisine and they showed how "google" learnt and stored words that are similar hence "page relevancy"

With regard to your sand issue, just ring them back!!!!!!

 

JB, can you explain more on how to use that search. It's the first time I've ever come across it.