There is NOT a PR Update going on!

People will find another way to evaluate sites and pages. Number of backlinks, SERPS and Alexa.

 

For those people who rely on reciprocal linking heavily I suppose this will make the process even more inefficient - in that now one of their quick measures of the value of a link is gone - now it will take another minute or two to evaluate this value. You'll have to look a bit more at that site. Do a little more homework. In this sense its probably a good idea for Google to get rid of it (if that's what they are doing) in that most of PR's use now just facilitate's reciprocal linking for SEO benefits.

Obviously PR is a very poor measure of the value of a link in total - many other factors. But it is a quick measure. Removing it just makes this harder for swappers.

 

I don't know how any thinking person could have included PR prominently in their link strategy for much of the last couple of years. The updates have been so random and rare that nobody can possibly know what a page's PR is. So how can any intelligent person put so much emphasis on such terrible and totally unreliable data?

Get links from site that are relevant and well designed. Make sure they are cached, but otherwise just ignore PR. You will be making totally erroneous decisions if you try to use this parameter in a linking strategy.

 

Well said! This is the strategy we have followed for link exchanges for a long time. I had a guy yesterday tell me he didn't want to exchange links with my new site until it got PR. lol Maybe today he will change his mind. or he may never find a link partner again.

 

It was because of talk of PR bleed. That's what caused the PR problems, people wanted to get PR only from higher PR'd sites, no matter what content it contained.

 

Shawn,

Very interesting and informative post. I wonder if someone did a ban all if they have a job come Tuesday Morning.

 

Certainly - but again - that's slower, requires more "work", and is not nearly as efficient. As such, it slows down the process and will likely limit or deter some.

 

Toolbar PR is a small factor in deciding whether to link to them or not. With updates every three months, I could plank down $500 to build backlinks, get myself up to a PR6-7, and then take them off after the update. My PR might be 0 internally (which is all that matters), and the toolbar would still show a 7.

Yeah, I hate working too. I wish someone would just write me a check for a few billion dollars and I'd never have todo any more work.

 

It's not slower for us. We come across sites all the time that have great PR but the page where the link goes has no cached. If you rely on PR now then you are doing yourself and your site a disservice.

 

Finally a voice of reason... Thanks, t2dman.

In marked contrast to the post by t2dman, we have (among many other posts):

Who is "many of us"? Has the water in Waterloo gone bad again, Bob?

 

But so what if PR bleeds? There is no evidence that PR makes a direct contribution to SERP placement. It certainly doesn't make a contribution to relevance. And "relevance" is what Google claims their SERP placement is all about.

And even if everything everyone ever attributed to PR was true. People are still making major decisions based on shit data. A basic principle of computing is garbage in garbage out. PR reporting has been garbage for about two years. No one has the data for good decision making. Making a decision based on bad data can be worse than having no data at all.

 

This is starting to sound like that Bill Murray line from Ghostbusters -- "the end of civilization as we know it"...

 

Get lost Minstrel! There are many on this forum who share that view and you know it.

PR is a mathematical construct. It is theme or keyword insensitive. Ergo it cannot influence relevancy ranking. And relevancy ranking is what google claims it's SERPs are all about. Ergo PR has no direct impact on SERP placement.

 

Pfffttt... what exactly is that little nugget based on?

Then may I suggest that you need a new strategy for link building?

Notice how quickly we go from "Is PR down?" to "Google is doing away with PR!" to "I think the reason Google is doing away with PR is {insert factor of your choice}"?

 

Exactly, compar... I take it you've had some coffee since your previous post

 

You were okay up to that last bit, Bob. The fact that PR and relevancy are two different factors does NOT demonstrate that PR has ceased to be a factor. That's a violation of basic logic.

 

LMAO! It just means people will have to work and actually sell and provide actual server data to prove their case.

I'm knida glad a stat that was for entertainment value fell on it's face. Let's get things sorted here SEO is just makeing a page SE friendly. Getting the word out is marketing. Let's see your server stats if you want to sell me an ad spot.

Maybe the scammers in the SEO industry will take a hike now. We can start from scratch and debunk any new ideas they try to scam down people's' throats from the get go and keep it honest.

 

Larry and Sergey have made the transition to the dark side and now are sith lords..

 

Personally I don't pay much attention to PR when establishing links, to begin with, it is in my book, highly overrated as a determining factor in such. The quality of a site is far and away a more logical component to look at. Wherein many request for reciprocal links are received from new sites with 0 PR, it would be a travesty to suggest that they are not entitled to a link, if they're a quality site, just because they have no PR. By the same respect, once established they may be looked upon very favorably by the search engines, and it would not be wise for me to have denied them the link.

For those suggesting that PR is the basis of their linking campaign, one might wonder how exactly do you determine who you link too for the other engines who don't offer PR as a guide???

As far as this being the end of the world in the Google PR game, one would think that if Google were going to intentionally and permanently, shut PR down, it would be very wise on their part to make an announcement or post notice of such on their website someplace, so that they weren't swamped with all the millions of e-mails they have no doubt received questioning why the PR Tool on all those millions of Google Bars out there in the world have just suddenly quit working.

And, God forbid they create mass hysteria in the world by simply shutting PR off.... I mean, who knows how many SEOs are out there jumping off buildings right now, the way some of you guys are carrying on here!! Speaking of which, has anyone taken roll call lately????