Matt Cutts on Pagerank and Serps

hohum...having sarcastically posted yesterday that I hoped every one of dp's members would start a thread to tell us all that they now have PageRank 2, it's rather looking like I'm being taken at my word

Anyway - those of you wondering what this up date is all about may have missed a little contribution from Matt Cutts on sphinn.com - to quote

"it's just a toolbar PageRank update. Even if you don't show much PageRank, Google still has 200+ other signals we use in our ranking. It's definitely common to see lower-PageRank sites ranking above higher-PageRank sites--which tends confuses the people who obsess too much about PageRank and who don't focus on other factors that search engines might use to rank pages."

http://sphinn.com/story/74952

so - a load of fuss over nothing - and interesting to see Matt Cutts categorically saying that lower PR often does better than higher PR in serps

 

I don't buy it, PR is one and the most important factor to rank websites in Google.
Not just based on your own site PR, but also on the backlinks and their relevancy
Anyway interesting find, and thank you for sharing.

 

no matter how much matt cutts and others try to prove that pr got no values, it does actually. higher pr to many bloggers means more earnings. there are other cases of course.

 

Now that lower PR often does better than higher ,why doesn't google do something to improve that?

 

Nothing new. PR lost a lot of it´s importancy. But fighting other optimized pages, you do not have much of a choice then trying to get lots and good backlinks.

 

Why do Google continue to show PR when even Matt cutts say it confuses?

 

There is only one explanation to this: Google has given up on creating an accurate PR algorithm because it's doesn't work

 

One more proof that PR is useless

 

PR is very helpful but they should "sandbox" all new sites for a year and wait before giving a pr

it is ridiculous to see some 2 month old site that the webmaster spent 90% of his time linkbuilding and get pr3 or pr4....... those pr's should only be for domains that have been around for awhile first

 

You are mistaken, though - there are really 2 PageRanks. The Toolbar PageRank, which has a single value between 1 and 10, and the Google internal PageRank, which no one knows much about (except to know that it does exist).

So you are half-way right: PageRank is the most important factor for Website ranking, but not the Toolbar PageRank!

 

Its true that pr is not important when it comes to serps but its still important to see how much authority a site has

 

Huh?

Source: http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

Google has yet to change the above page and their explanation of PR. And of course it is internal PR that they use to calculate the rank of a site and not the toolbar.

 

Because if they done away with it then somebody else would come along with a new 0-10 banding system to replace it with

 

the PR system is not foolproof and can be manipulated so they do have to use other factors that make up a site's SERP.

 

PR is worthless unless you want to sell links ( which Google does not like )

I have several PR3 pages on my site that are number one in Google. I have never really cared about PR and my main page moved from PR4 to PR3 last time, but it does not bother me to be honest.

 

PR is important on the base that does roughly show how your link building is going. It is important for directories and bloggers mainly though.

 

Yep. Exactly.

 

He categorically said... "It's definitely common" He did not say that lower PR sites "often" do better than higher PR sites.

Exactly.

I hear a lot of people (who don't work for Google) saying that PR is meaningless or worthless and that it has no relation to SERP's. Even though Google themselves state that there is.

What these people should be aware of (and I am sure most are) is that the "toolbar" PR is a basic snapshot of the site, and the "real" PR assigned to a site by Google is more complex and regularly updated, and does indeed have an affect on SERP's.

Anchor text combined with PR (I guess they are related) can get a site to the top of the SERP's in Google even if the site has no "on page" optimization or relation to the keyword used.
EG: type "click here" in Google and press I'm feeling lucky. You will arrive at a page that does not have the term "click here" in it.
What it does have is a high toolbar PR (was 10, but now 9) and a lot of links pointing to the site with the anchor text "click here".

As for low toolbar PR sites ranking above high toolbar PR sites for a keyword, well that just comes down to how well the site has been optimized (off and on page) for the keyword used. And that optimization may also be one of the factors that Google use in its "real" PR for that page, but not reflected in the toolbar.

Well anyway, the quote Snowbird referred to pretty much sums it up and the PR mentioned in the quote is not the same as the PR shown in the toolbar.

Just sharing my opinion.

Cheers
James

 

Last year my PR was a 5, then a 3, now a 2! But, I'm getting more organic traffic from Google then ever before. At least 3 times as much when I was a PR 5.
I linked to a couple of other websites, it might of appeared I sold links. They were affiliated with me so I'm sure that's why I'm a PR 2 now.

 

PR is just another way for us to constantly be thinking about how to get good rankings in Google. It puts a sort of monopoly on search engines by creating an absolute numerical ranking standard that everyone can go by. Google is the only SE with enough data to create these. That is why we have, and always will have a PR ranking system. Whether or not it is valuable is up for the individual webmaster to determine.

In general, higher PR is better, NOT always. Why can't people just accept this and stop going in circles.