Why Do People Say PR is Useless?

I remain dumbfounded that people constantly disregard what Google itself says about page rank — "...PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools...Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search." That can be read in fuller detail at http://www.google.com/technology/.

What am I missing here? Google says that they factor PageRank into the search results! That is far from "useless".

Too many have bitten for the noble-sounding and widely-quoted phrase that "PR is useless". It is not useless if it factors into SERPs (search results).

Most of us couldn't care less about our little PR number in and of itself. But when it is factored into search results (and it is!), then I care a lot about it.

And forget the anecdotal stories about your PR 2 outranking a PR5 for some search term. Realistically, take a large sample of search terms from two similar sites, and the PR5 will consistently clobber the PR2 site, all other factors being equal.

Others cry, "The toolbar PR is not accurate." Actually, over the long haul, statistically, it is pretty accurate. There may be fluctuations in the "real" PR between PR exports, but for the vast majority of websites, your toolbar PR is probably pretty close to your "real" PR which (back to the earlier point) is factored into search results.

 

Because it's more complicated than what they want to try and grasp, they think it's better to try and sound smart then to actually figure it out. Most of them are in it for the easy buck (I mean, who doesn't want that, right?), so if it actually means thinking then it's easier to say screw it.

Which is fine. Keeps the competition down. Just annoying as hell when they get all righteous about it.

-Michael

 

It may not be entirely useless, But there is a big difference between being entirely useless and playing an important roll. Time and time again i see low PR site appearing above high PR site, Even the example i posted that shows for a search term a page a few days old with zero pr can rank #1, 21 pages ahead of a page with pr6. How can you see that and continue to assume that PR plays an important roll in SERPS?

I would admit it's not entirely useless, But at best it's a tie breaker. It certainly doesn't deserve the attention that people so often give it. In fact, PR would be the last thing id consider when buying a link or a domain.

They aren't ranking better because of the PR. Thew PR is an effect of what makes them rank well. A site with high PR isn't necessarily a good site and it doesn't necessarily rank well. But a good site will, Over time, get good PR and rank well.

It's like a gold medal is an effect of winning a race, Possession of a gold medal isn't evidence that a race was won. You confuse cause and effect.

PR is a measure of backlinks, right? And what are the 2 most important factors of backlinks? Anchor text and authority... 2 things PR completely ignores. So if i get backlinks and focus on the anchor text and authority of those backlinks i will outrank a site that focuses on the PR of their backlinks.

I can buy PR, Any PR i want.. PR 10 if i have enough money. And as such there is no way Google are going to give weight to a factor that can be so easily manipulated.

 

I thought the original discussion was about PR and value. PR , of course is what we all do everyday. It's an industry of it's own.
But it is not the only thing to consider...just one of the things when determining value.
You cannot tell the worth of a site, or domain, based on what the current PR is alone, because it is not permanent, and it is only as good as the owner at the time.
If you got a PR 7 and it would stay that way forever, then PR would God's gift to Google, but that is not the case, and every 3-4 months, it has a good chance of changing. Something so uncertain, and fleeting cannot be solely, the deciding factor for determining value or importance of a site.

We get caught up in it because of, mostly vanity, because the only thing that really matters is traffic, targeted, quality, returning traffic.
You can have good traffic without good PR, and good PR does not mean a good site, only that is has been SEO'ed well.
I have seen many PR 7 sites that are only worth link sales. That is it.
All SEO no substance.

So no! IMO, you cannot mathematically determine value or importance of a website or domain, based on PR.
The web is used by humans, not mathematical equations.
All PR says, is that the owner of the site has done SEO and established 1000's of backlinks, not that he knows how to run an informative or interesting site, or that the site owner even cares.

Websites, blogs, and domains, are separate from PR.
The site or Domain is the Vehicle, all PR is , is what kind of spark plugs can you afford to put in it, and if you put in the good spark plugs, you get rewarded by Google.

I will say again, I see many crap websites with good PR, constantly searching for new traffic.
Of course if you are on the first page, you will get that immediate traffic, but as the web settles in, and users become more savvy, the will not be so easy to jump just because it's number 1, or they have the domain that matches.
People are starting to get wise that it is about who can afford to be at the top, not which site is actually relevant, or updated.

"Webmsters" spend more time, and money on PR and SEO than they do, design, content, research, copywriting, etc.
Unfortunately, it's not enough to have a good site, you have to play the other game too.

 

Because it matters where the PR comes from. How can you not know that?

Make 2 sites. Point 10 PR2 links at one, with a given anchor text, and 10 PR4 links at another with the same anchor text. Make those the only links. Then tell me that PR is useless.

It is true, when you look at the little green bar, you can not tell what the anchor text was of the links that made up that value were... so what? How does that equate to PR is meaningless?

-Michael

 

It can't be the PR that's important then can it. It's the authority that is important.

I didn't say meaningless, I said it's effect is so insignificant it shouldn't even be consided, Let alone worshipped and that authority and anchor text are the important factprs of backlinks, Not the PR.. I even actually used the words "I would admit it's not entirely useless, But at best it's a tie breaker."

Like i said, It's a tie breaker at best. In that situation it would be a tie breaker (assuming all other things are equal).

 

I promise you, get 10 on topic well themed PR1 links to site A, and 10 off topic random themed PR4 links to site B, and use the same anchor text for all of them, and site B will rock site A. It's not a minor factor.

But, believe what you will. Just because it's the PR of the links point to page that matter, and not the PR of the actual page, does not mean that PR is useless.

-Michael

 

Get 10 authoritive links with targeted anchor text and it will blow both out of the water.

The points i'm trying to get accross is that PR doesn't (hardly) effect SERPS and that it should be the last thing you consider when getting backlinks.

People obsess over it as if it's the be all and end all of SEO. They are wasting thier time. If i could start building sites all over again the first thing i'd do is completely ignore PR. I have spent a lot of money and time trying to increase PR on various sites and it had no noticable effect on SERPS.

A good site will get PR, But PR doesn't make it a good site. That is a fact, It's a fact that google are aware of and it's a fact that they have factored in to thier algo.

 

Lest we forget, PR is a rank that Google assigns to our page. It takes a multitude of factors into account that mean something to Google. Then it uses its complex formulas to render it down to a specific numerical rank that is called page rank.

All the ins and outs and nuances various posters allude to are already taken into account by Google in assigning that page rank. It is essentially a "bottom-line" number. To me it is important (not "useless") if Google "ranks" me higher than if they rank me lower.

I subscribe to the "follow-the-money-trail" theory. If Google hires so many engineers and spends so much money on its page rank computations, I would be a (financial) fool to ignore it. If you're convinced that all those engineers and all that money Google spends are for something "useless", then be my guest and ignore page rank. It clears the SERPs playing field for the rest of us.

 

And that's where I am saying you are wrong. I know that you've never tested this, because if you had you would see that's not the case.

-Michael

 

Iv'e done many tests in my time figuring out what matters and what doesn't. All i can say is if it appeared that PR had an effect on SERPS it was probably the effect of authority you were seeing. Authoritive sites usually have high PR, But not all high PR sites are authoritive sites.

What makes you think they spend a great deal of money on pagerank? The pagerank aglo probably hasn't changed much sinse google was concieved. It's the SERPS ranking algo they work on.

That follow-the-money trail you are on? take a map, You are going to get lost.

 

All the PR in world means nothing if your site sucks.

 

While it's true a PR 0 can outperform a PR 4...get real!
More often than not a higher PR site does in fact place better in SERPs.

Like most things...there are exceptions.

bunch o' PR haters

 

NOT BECAUSE OF THE PR THOUGH

 

OK, back to what Google itself states: "PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools." (http://www.google.com/technology/).

PR = "a CENTRAL ROLE" in web SEARCH via Google. Why is this concept so hard for many to grasp?

 

Perhaps the topic should have read "Why Do People Say Toolbar PR is Useless?"

It's because the PR we see is "delayed" and different from the one Google uses in ranking search results. An although it plays a central role, it's also just 1 of 200 factors.

 

Well, I just did my own ranking similiar to Google's.
I took number of posts for each person as an "authority" rating, and summed up total posts for and against (i ignore multiple posts in this thread and ambiguous responses). Then I multiplied those I disagreed with by .85 (jk)

Anyway, we got 42952 PR not important...12380 PR important

I was just wondering what those with alot posts (authority) thought. Most of the people with alot of posts seem to be saying PR not important. My paultry 100 posts mean nothing

 

st0x, I officially nominate you to be our spokesman. Would you please inform Matt Cutts, Vanessa Fox, and the rest of the Google engineers that they can now quit spouting off about the Snitch On Thy Neighbor campaign, the one about people buying links for PageRank in order to improve their rankings? That they can really stop worrying about it now once and for all, because you have determined that it doesn't affect things anyways!

I mean, damn, son, you know how much money they are wasting, paying engineers that make more in a month than what many on this forum make in a year, to go after people who buy links on high PageRank sites? Hell, they should reward you for pointing it out to them!

Go get em!

-Michael

 

My understanding is that PR is good for short term planning. If you want to try and launch your website with as much of a boost as you can then buying links on high PR websites will help you. However in the long run it does seem that traffic and reputation will win the day.

 

May I respectfully suggest that there are two significant errors in this statement:

1) The fact that the toolbar PR is "delayed" does not automatically mean it is inaccurate. For most established websites (not new ones), the variation in "real" PR and toolbar PR between toolbar exports is probably between slim and none.

2) Google says that PR plays a "CENTRAL ROLE" in their search tools. That is a far cry from being just lumped in with hundreds of other factors. Please quote to me any other of those 200 factors that Google describes as "central" in their search tools.