While link popularity (specifically site wide links and doorway pages) has been devalued somewhat by G in recent months, to say that it makes up only 5% is way off in my opinion. The entire premise of Google is built upon pagerank and link popularity. Although links are able to be manipulated, they are less easily manipulated than meta tags, spam content, etc. In other words, it is harder to "fake" a high PR link than generating a few thousand bogus content pages. A site with 50k pages, solid on-site SEO, but a small amount of backlinks will never beat out a site with 1k pages, solid on-site SEO and a large amount of relevant PR5+ links, IMO.
danpadams: With Google what matters the most for ranking is your keyword you are targeting in the anchor text of lots of inbound links (IBLs). While 2 years ago or so Pagerank counted for alot of weight in the ranking algo this has been devalued to a great degree. While no one knows for sure how much ranking weight PR has most people hold that its not much. But really what one wants is IBLs. Of course with IBLs comes PR. Another thing that PR brings, or should I say lots of IBLs that have lots of IBLs, is deeper crawls from the Googlebot. Also as infiniterb noted PR is good to have on your category pages when you are requesting reciprocal links. Some also like it for bragging rights : ) infiniterb: While the toolbar PR may be out of date (last updated Jan 1st) you will notice that the PR of pages quite often remains the same from update to update. Michael: Modified PR? Where did you get your info on modified PR. I have never read a serious page on PR that spoke of such a thing.
I think by modified PR he means the internal "true" PR value. The true PR for a page is a kind of "percentage" of how important your site is compared to the most important site(s) on the web, and as such it's probably a real number (or floating point) - like 34.3112%. It's calculated iteratively by Google when they update the PageRanks - the algo goes through all of its cached links, weighing over and over until there's no more major movement. This is the value Google uses when it calculates the SERP for a search term. The toolbar & dmoz display a rounded integer value of the PR. As other people have said, it's by not the only factor. I would qualify that as: "But really what one wants are IBLs from high PR sites with the keywords you're targetting in the anchor text". That's pretty much what will sort you out the best.
It is used to describe any modification on Brin and Page's original description of PR here are a few examples; Exploiting PageRank at Different Block Level, Xue-Mei Jiang et al., Adaptive Ranking of Web Pages, Ah Chung Tsoi et al., or Implicit Link Analysis for Small Web Search, Gui-Rong Xue et al. I used it to mean whatever Google use now as the PR element in their current algorithm. We can only speculate what it is but I think it is safe to assume that it is no longer just the original PageRank calculation which has been considerably modified since its inception. - Michael
davedx: I doubt Michael means true, real or raw PR for modified PR as he speaks of raw PR also. Michael: Using the term modified PR just confuses things. We have real PR, Google directory PR and toolbar PR. While I can understand some one refering to the "modified pagerank equation" or noting that pagerank has been modified, it is best to refer to real or raw pagerank as just that, real or raw pagerank with out noting that it is modified. First time I have seen the term used outside tech pages. Just seems strange to me : )
If 2 identical pages have different pagerank, wich one will be the first in SERPs for any of the words of their content? Is is true that with a good optimization you can get close to the top, but what if the other sites (with better PR) are optimized just like yours?
chances are if it has a higher PR then it probably has more links pointing to it. more links (with the right anchor text) will probably make that site rank higher.
I agree with this, I was talking specifically about the PR value and not including link popularity, which in my opinion is the biggest factor in a page ranking - with good anchor text of course.
How long does it usually take to get a Page Rank for a site? I have a site (funtriviaonline.com) that I created in early February. It was indexed fairly rapidly and has been visited by Google several times since then (if I am to believe the Google toolbar) but still no PR. Is there anything that can be done to get this done sooner?
From what I understand about PR in pertains more to off page rather than on page criteria...bl's, quality (relevance), amount of ogl on page, etc.
That's correct: PR is derived from other pages linking to your pages. The other variable is that Toolbar PR is only updated at (by now rather infrequent) intervals -- my memory of when this last occurred is rather vague but I don't believe there has been one since early February when your site went online so you won't see a change until whenever Google decides to do the next Toolbar PR update.
dawggone: The toobbar (TB) PR updates are not about every 3 months. The last update was Jan 1st and we are due for one shortly. We have had 2 Google Directory (GD) PR updates since the TB PR update in Jan. I am predicting an update for March 26th. You can see my Pagerank history list here. www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.html
Nice page. It seems by breifly glancing your statistics TBPR Update happens on an average of every 90 days. Good info to have. I also noticed there is not an exact day where us webmasters can expect it...72, 107, 96 days...just an observation that I think helps keep the real hardcore SEO guys on there toes.
Toolbar PageRank is updated when Google is ready to update it. Period. Making predictions about a specific day or date is just outright silly.
Interesting. Somebody who chooses to remain anonymous (bobmutch?) apparently took offense to that last comment. But it doesn't alter the truth of the statement, does it?
I agree Minstrel. Even if the predictions were correct, how is that going to help me as an internet marketeer/SEO/Webmaster/whatever? For selling links it could be interesting perhaps, but selling links based on PR is frowned upon by Google. For SEO's who have silly customers perhaps, because their clients might be expecting some 'green' from your efforts. But again, that is perceived value instead of true value. Really, I can't think of any good reasons for knowing the next (or even the previous) PR update. I don't even know the PR of my sites since I don't have the official TB anymore and no other FF plugins. My SERPs have been just fine even without knowing PR for 3 months now. Toolbar PR is just a snapshot. The moment it's public, it's pretty much useless IMO. Anyone any suggestions as to why it might be handy to know when the next update is? I've spent enough time on PR for the next 2 months by just posting this...
PR...it seems has become purely entertainment. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. I see no use to know exactly when an update (PR) may occur. I use the toolbar more to qualify the importance of a page I am viewing. This sometimes lends creditbility (to me) to a site you are going to purchase from or are relying on for integrity of data.
Actually the statement is rather preposterous (no offense intended, just stating "the truth" ). Given that there is a very clear trend into how much time passes between Toolbar PR updates, estimating the date of the update plus/minus 1 month isn't too difficult. Saying that Google updates when they want is true in a trivial sense; saying guessing a date is silly makes little sense. A specific date guess for when the update will happen is extremely unlikely to be accurate, needless to say; but a range of 30-60 days is pretty likely to be correct. And, to some segments of our community, this would be useful info. My memory might be wrong, but I believe the guess date was pretty accurate for the January update; only off by a couple weeks. In any case, I appreciate the effort that went into the creation of that page
I wouldn't call it a clear trend, first of all, other than about every three months or so the toolbar PR is updated. Saying "guessing a date is silly" not only makes sense but is confirmed by what you say here and here That is only slightly less silly than saying "I expect a PR update in 2005" or "I predict it will be March 26 at 4.15 am EST". If indeed the PR updates are approximately quarterly, which is approximately a 13 week time period, then saying "I predict [insert date here] plus or minus 30 days or plus or minus 'a couple of weeks'" gives you a prediction with an error range of approximately one-third... hardly a useful prediction beyond the bald statement that it is approximately quarterly, I'd say. What is actually being said is "I predict the next PR update will be between February 26 and April 26" -- how many webmasters are going to find that "prediction" riveting information?
an estimate that can range from 30-60 days is not overly useful to be honest. You're right, it's pretty likely to be correct because it is such a huge range. But 60 days is 2 months, not much of a prediction.