PageRank: A Realistic Assessment.

Okay first let me introduce myself, I am the wordpress blogger and theme designer of Nokia Symbian Themes. I have been blogging since January 2008 more or less.

That being done, I have seen countless people here (both senior members with all greenies and newbies with none) saying PR doesn't matter and PR matters and what not. People calling people NOOBs cause they "believe" in PR and people saying other people "idiot" cause they dont use so called dirrrrty blackhat methods and people saying people naive cause they believe in whitehat methods only.

So does PR really matters? Is SERP is everything? Is PR only good for link selling? Is buying links right? Or is selling links wrong? Can I gain any advantage with PR against my competitor? Can PR actually help me with anything at all if I am not selling/buying links?

In my opinion it really.... depends on your own ethics and needs as a webmaster and your purpose for the site overall. As for me, I dont buy or sell links, never did and never will cause according to me it is unnecessary and I believe in my own capabilities to be linked to by others.

In my honest opinion:

a) PR does matter, and it matters quite a lot. Why would it matter? How can I prove that? It matters when you search for the most competitive terms and only the ones with good PR turns up in SERP's first page. PR matters when you want reputation of a site not only in SERP rankings but in other people's opinion. PR matters in terms of trust also, a visitor who has the slightest idea of PR will know the difference of a PR less site and one without it. Does it mean that a site without PR and sites just starting up doesn't have that capability? Definitely it has the capability. Everyone starts from the pit, the very bottom where PR is non existent. Building trust and writing/creating "quality" content will earn that trust even if you do not have a PR. With that being said, now imagine if the site also had PR beside that quality content and trust! Exactly, at least and even if you dont rank well in the search engine, the people (the savvy ones) who will visit your site will know its importance in terms of google's opinion to it all.... I mean, its safe to assume that PR is Google's opinion of you... say it isn't so?

Some say, backlinks are everything.... wrong! Backlinks are only part of the PR assessment imo... The correct term should be quality backlinks and the diversity of those back links.... With much less quality backlinks (I am not talking in terms of 50 backlinks of course... more!) than another site it is most possible to achieve a good PR similar, equal, more than that site. It is a proven fact!

b) So does it mean that PR can effect SERP rankings? Hell knows it can! Search for the term computer and check the PR of the sites of the first page... all have PR! Good PR! Now some sites with higher PR will rank lower in the search engine.... why? Because my good friend, PR is given to you after a certain period of time, rankings are much much much more dynamic and the "whole pie" of rankings is not ENTIRELY based on PR. It is based on number of links, people talking about it without links, the diversity of the links, and the authority of those links as a whole. SERP positions can vary everyday, every hour but PR (talking about Toolbar PR here which... we can find out right?) varies only after a certain period of time. To me, SERP is determined by much more complex stuffs than PR, but PR is a big chunk of its determination. Coming back to the "lower PR higher serp" issue we will see that the difference in terms of position is merely between a page, meaning, if the lower PR site is at number uno then the higher PR site is there within the first page. BUT, in the long term without quality contents, that lower PR site will surely fall and that is a fact. But, the factor of time depends on the niche itself. Some niches get new content every one second and some does within a week so definitely the niche you are in really does matter.

c) Those saying PR is only good for link selling is absolutely blind. There are enough non profit organizations and bloggers and personal sites out there which can prove it wrong and I am one of them. I dont brag about PR (Hell my site is down right now!! ) and I think there is nothing to brag about, cause PR does the talking itself. Link buying/selling for PR in my opinion is just ugh!!! But, if you are buying/selling it for traffic then its a whole different issue but we are not going into that.

d) PR is very useful for ranking well in the SERP engine and I hope searching for the term of computer proves that. Like, Dell's PR is 8/10 and Apple's PR is 9/10. So why exactly would DELL be up there over Apple in the rankings? Because, its a general fact that Dell is much more popular to people than Apple is. So Dell ranks better! So next question is why dont Google presents Dell with Apple's PR or better? Simple, cause in terms of web development (I am talking about internet and not designing) Apple is much more relevant and "giving to the community" than Dell is and Apple is gifted with that PR 9 (once again in my opinion). In this world's economy not always quality comes first, sometimes we will compromise on quality if it is of a lesser price and easier to implement and that is the case with RANKINGS. PR is what the VALUE of a site is, RANKINGS is the POPULARITY of a site as a whole. Blackhatters can manipulate rankings big time but not in the long term, NEVER! Google is quite supreme and end of the day Google's search engine is an user friendly search engine.... NOT a webmaster friendly and that is the way it should be.... cause unlike you and me, others are not webmasters! It is OUR duty to get used to that cause that is how it SHOULD BE.

Lastly, as an webmaster it is your duty and motivation to serve your visitors right? If that is the case, then there should not be any problem with anything cause visitors give you PR. Not all visitors, NO... visitors who are other webmasters or visitors who are friends of other webmasters and who will promote your site for free. That what gives you rankings, both in terms of SERP and PR. This is the very reason why non profit sites do so well in terms of SERP and PR both, cause they simply do not care about it well and goes for quality content and so should everyone!

Lastly, PR matters like hell... and it will always matter cause PR after all havent got any drawbacks whatsoever. And if your ethics are right in terms of PR, its easier to get than to lose it.

Just my opinion, everything up there and I will love to hear your opinion about it all... So just shoooooot away friends and foes alike....

 

Thanks for your informative post

 

My opinion is no it doesn't effect SERPs. I think sites that are older and around longer tend to end up with PR naturally, so it's hard to just say higher PR beats out everything. I see PRs around 3,4 and 5, out perform 7 and 8s.

My opinion on PR is it determines how often you're spidered and how deep the spiders dig. It also improves the time it takes to get you indexed in the engine. No difference in SERPs

 

studentuk.co.uk has been running for 11 years and only has a pr rank of 3 its in books, school leaflets, so natural age must be a mojor factor since it ranks on the first page for students whilst my sites pr 2 and doesnt rank in the first 200 pages.. meh i just see PR as a kind of achievement sign, by which i mean you can be proud you got your ranking using your own skill and without black hat techniques becuase u lack the time, motivation and ethics when building your site, of which are usualy only built for profit and tends to hold little to no useful information on But hey well done black hatters for your profits while we white hatters walk on the nice guy street.

 

Yes, you are exactly right in term of PR & SERP. The big thing about higher PR websites is the frequency of googlebot to crawl the web content.

Lets take an practical example...

A news Website www.abc.com have the PR 9 and another website www.xyz.com have the PR 2/3/4
When both website publish the latest news, the first website www.abc.com news surly got indexed first because the fact that higher PR websites are frequently watched by the crawler, hence it comes up first & top in SERP. while the second website www.xyz.com would got indexed later than 1st one, so its SERP also displayed later with lower SERP rank.

So, you see the real importance of PR, to me it really matters your business scenario.

 

Not excatly ... That depend on DC's ,, when i seacrh for free nokia themes i get like firdt results site wih low PR .
and their ranking is too old and durative .
with only PR3 a site can reach hight tanks in Serps .

 

Thanks for your opinion...sometimes we making confused by google.

 

Domain age is really not a huge factor at all. My domain is only five months old and it is PR 6 and I can honestly say that no blackhats or link buying or any other weird tactics. Lastly it really depends on the quailty of sites content for bots of google to enter my site (beside you telling google explicitly to visit everyday). I agree, that when you search for Free Nokia Themes in general its the lower Pr sites coming up in front of me. But for them the number of links and age of domain plays a huge factor, and they have a Pr of 5 which is almost equal to mine so my one Pr advantage falls down to the vast incoming links of them cause they also have unique content comin from all around the globe. Plus, its more about personal quality stuff in my blog more than anythin. Moreover I don't believe in keywords at all. I believe its upto Google to decide whats the right keyword for me. Except my homepage I don't even have keywords assigned. Lol But I do get enough uniques for a personal site to be happy about Call me crazy with my ethics and ways but I follow my own rules, which happens to be quite similar with google guidelines. Thanks for the comment anyway Cheers and hope to see even more of them coming.

 

Wow, thanks for this informative post, i know it takes time to write this kind of posts but i hope you keep on posting

 

It really does according to me as well, however, its not everything! Thanks a lot for your opinion...

 

i usualy dont read such a big articles but obviously you know what are u talking about you are not obsesed with pr neither you devaluate it and i agree at most points with you allthough i am sure old omains that was actualy used for the same niche that they were about and you keep the same niche to build a quality site on them have very importance and great inpact in your serps.(sorry for my bad english,i hope you get what i mean).
Green aded

 

thanks for the post

 

Mate you are a noob and confused about PR

Simply PR doesn't mean higher SERPS

High SERPS can bring (is quite natural) high PR

 

That's a great article, thanks for sharing with us. Your effort is highly appreciated

 

Good article.....and keep up the good work!!!

 

There are some mis-conceptions on what you said in your writings. There are way too many examples of sites with PR0 having SERP ranking #1-#10. PR actually got nothing to do with SERPs. You could take it more like a status symbol. My site is a PR 6 sounds like my kid goes to Harvard

By the way the Nokia design is nice.

 

IMO..
PR does matter - but not a lot. It's a good indication of whether you're site is taken seriously by Google - a hit in your PR is a hit to your credibility, you could have more links then Google - but if Google says your PR is 1 from a PR 5 - it's a good indication that Google doesn't like your sites practices or you've lost a lot of credibility (link wise).

PR however only becomes really crucial if you're PR 6+, at that point you're site starts getting ranked higher and for more keywords - PR 6 sites generally rank well for a lot of keywords - most of which they appear within the first 5 results shown. It's extremely difficult to maintain a high PR, and at some point that no seo really knows (despite what they claim) it becomes a game of luck, link credibility and whether Google takes your organization/site to be authoritative.

Ultimately don't sweat PR, get backlinks and that will lend well to your PR - concern yourself to get a higher PR - but don't worry about being a PR 2, in my somewhat-educated opinion I believe that a pr between 2 and 4 to be adequate, anything higher is of course better. PR 3 I'd say is the average to which you want to generally maintain, if you drop to PR2 -work on building your pagerank (directories, etc). If you're at PR 3-4, you can continue building but I'd say it's most likely best to just leave it and concentrate on other things, monetization, etc.

 

I agree with a lot of what's been said, except the original posters rational for Apple's 9 versus Dell's. Nobody is going to "gift" anything to Apple and I think it is arguable they have "given" more than Dell.

 

Exactly what I said in my post, thanks for verifying it over again

 

100% agreed! SERP is always worthy.