Page Rank & You By Robert W. Newton Many people confuse Page Rank (PR) and SERP’s. I have myself, in the past, discounted the usefulness of PR altogether. I had read a myriad of articles regarding PR, and all of the “experts†(NOT associated with Google) said it was pointless, and to concentrate on SEO that delivers SERP’s. While SERP’s are still, in my opinion, the more important of the two, PR importance has risen. Why, do you ask? Good question. PR, for all intents and purposes, is Google’s attempt at predicting how likely someone will be to visit your site based on random web surfing. Although the exact algorithm is difficult, at best, to describe, it roughly equates to “more links equals higher PR†(all done on a logarithmic scale). How does that work? A consumer is web surfing. They visit a site. While on that site they see a link to another site (whether they realize it’s another site or not is not important). They click on it. They’re now on a different site from where they started. So, how does that relate to PR? Well, plainly put, as one of my old employers used to say, “It’s all in the numbers. You ask out 1,000 women, and 100 might go out with you. Of those 100 women, 10 might … (the rest I’ll leave to your imagination). The more women you ask out, the more might … “ So, the more links that point at your site, the more consumers might visit your site, and the more that visit your site, the more might buy – more visits yields more conversions. So, more links, more buys. But, what about those people that try to fool Google (and probably do a pretty good job) into giving them a higher PR than they really deserve? How could they do that? I’ll answer the 2nd question first. They get more links by hook or crook. What does that mean? They buy or trade links. If they get caught buying links, then supposedly Google punishes them. Ok. If they trade them, though, and here’s why trying to fool Google is a waste of time, they usually end up with a link that no one will ever find, can you say buried away on a “links page†that’s not prominently positioned, easily found, or navigated to? And, if the buyer can’t find it, it’s as good as useless. The bottom line, don’t worry about PR. If you get lots of prominently positioned links to your site, you get more traffic, and more traffic equals more sales. And, for bragging rights, as a side note, you get a higher PR.
When starting a website all to often people go chasing the wrong things. Start a website and concentrate on it by adding content, search engine optimising the right way - White Hat Seo and get the all important targetted traffic to it whilst ensuring the website is fully functional. This way - PR and everything will follow naturally.
I originally wrote that to "dumb it down" so my boss (boss's name withheld so no one will pick on him for being a "rocket scientist" - private joke) would better understand that PR and SERP's are different and not dependent on each other. For one reason or another, I ended up not giving it to him, and so the story might have ended there. Recently, however, I was talking with a potential employer, and to prove I knew something (a smattering) about the subject, I sent her a copy of what I had written (apologizing for the quote). As I am tired of other people getting credit for my ideas, I decided to post it here (hopefully she hasn't already done so elsewhere).
This is funy How to know what is really deserving PR? I tell you why I'm care about my PR. 1. PR shows how many backlinks have this particular page. More backlinks with right anchors => higher position in SERP => more visitors => more money for me 2. If page have high PR - this page more important for Google. If from this page I make a links to another page from even the same website - it will help to other page move higher in SERP => more visitors => more money for me 3. When there are someone belive into p1 and p2 I can sale links from my high PR pages and make some money. So, PR is very important for me - it help me to make some money, with or without visitors. But please remember that PR this is a int value from some logarithm which updated once per few monthes, but real PR is hidden and updeted permanently.
1. People report them (webmaster tools). 2. Forums like this one where people openly buy and sell links. 3. Sites that openly sell links. copy/paste Report paid links Help us maintain the quality of Google search results. We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users' best interests at heart. Some site owners attempt to "buy PageRankâ„¢" in the form of paid links to their sites. Buying links to improve PageRank violates our quality guidelines. Google uses a number of methods to detect paid links, including algorithmic techniques. We also welcome information from our users. If you know of a site that buys or sells links, please tell us by filling out the fields below. We'll investigate your submissions, and we'll use your data to improve our algorithmic detection of paid links. Report paid links Loading... source:https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?hl=en
ok..sounds reasonable...but do you really think that is really happening? i myself don't think that...if we take websites that nobody heard about them and suddenly they take top positions and get pr5-7 in couple months then? if i sell a link on my website do you think that i would go and report it?
Good thread Focusing on some important points. But i think that somehow page rank does matter in the search engine ranking.
Hopefully you would not report yourself! Let's say that Bob (made up name) out ranks me (SERPS) for my best keywords. Let's say that I see Bob buying links and doing other shady stuff, I'll report Bob in a heart beat. As far as people getting good page rank and selling links, it's none of my business. If you can get a PR5 + after a few months and make a couple hundred a month off of links then thumbs up. If Google does not alter your page rank for selling links then you have a good thing going. The website owner is happy, the link buyers are happy.......everyones happy including myself so long as I don't catch Bob buying them.
I'm up in the air on that one. I have a 2 month old site with a PR3 that is sandboxed. So I have rank but I have a 100% change of being the last site found for any keyword search. Rewind 3 weeks and I am getting a good flow of search engine traffic and no PR. I'll take traffic over page rank any day! IMHO a low PR keeps spammers and link seekers away.
Before reporting of a sold links, can you be absolutely sure that these links were sold? I don't think so. Furthermore, moderators in GOOGLE can't tell with 100% that this link was sold or not. Yes, sometimes is is obvious, but SEO masters have a little bit of brain to make links looking natural.
Interesting? So why so much discussion about the importance of page rank if it is only "noobs or people not to bright"? Some people do bring up valid discussions. If PR is a measurement put in place by google the worlds greatest search engine then this scale of measurement must be of importance to that search engine. Now the only thing that remains is to utilise this measurement effectively and not to ignore something that is put on a scale of importance otherwise it would not be put on a scale at all. I believe that a high PR does bring its' benefits which in turn improves SERPs and the same can be said vice versa. I think that although there are some crafty people using black hat techniques that are frowned upon by google you will only really be penalised if you do not know what you are doing. This is where you will see the "noobs or people not so bright".
Some of these threads in the links section of DP are openly selling links: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 100% sure, no never! Anyone could make up a dummy account here and sell links on their competitors sites. Then they could point google to the thread. I would assume google has systems in place to protect people?