Even i am Confused About the "PR" For Some it is Nothing for Some it is Every thing ? What is the Actual Thing about PR ?
An interesting set of comments on a subject that is very topical, and their are many variables that effect the ranking
its funny but lots of people will want to buy link from you just because you have a higher pr even though you might not have a lot of traffic. i would rather go for low pr and lots of traffic any day.
PR is like a degree. It might not show that a person is more intelligent than another person, but is an indication of the persn't character.
That's true, when you have PR you don't see the point in it. When you don't have any then everything seems more difficult - i.e. getting people to link to you.
that just shows how naive your are... even if pr is just for 'show' or 'fun'... people (whether they know or not) thinks it matters... and because they think it matters, it really matters... like a self-fulfilling prophecy... just go to the marketplace section of sp, dp or np... and tell me whether toolbar pr matters...
Thats right, its all about perception. but I think PR does still carry some weight aside from just selling links and trading links.
These are all very great points, and some have been on my mind. I like what Matt, and others say. Alot of it is perception. I see people buying links from higher PR sites all the time just because of the PR. But they aren't checking traffic. An example of sites getting PR. I have a site that I use for local traffic. Don't need it to rank in SE. Most traffic comes by me alone. I had somebody with a PR6 place my site on her page. Soon after, my site had a PR2. I'm convinced it had something to do with her placing my link on her page. I'm coming to this conclusion. I think, when starting a site, it's a good thing to search out high PR sites and link on them because it will help get your site indexed quicker. May or may not bring traffic. But there is a common perception that if a site has no PR, it's struggling, if it has a high PR, it's getting alot of traffic and must be worthy of spending money on. So maybe getting higher PR will help you sell others on your site (and products and services) as well. No?
to answer the importance of PR let me ask you one question. How do a site gets higher PR? Once you get this answer ask yourself how do we get more traffic? You would notice that somewhere down the line the two answers have alot in common.
PR is normally out of date and perceived value can always be wrong. People who buy links purely on the PR of a site can easily be fooled into buying low quality links that get devalued after a PR update. An example, buying links to 2 different sites: Site A buys 10 PR 4 links from different sites that link to it for $25 per link. Site B buys 50 PR 0 links from different sites that link to it for $5 per link. Both have spent $250 on buying links, while Site A is relying on 10 people to boost their PR whereas Site B has 50 people trying to boost their PR. In 3 months when a large scale PR takes place, if 10 of the 50 sites that Site B have bought links on increase to PR 4 then effectively they have got a bargain... paying $50 compared to $250. In the same instance, what if 5 of the sites that Site A bought links on no longer have a PR 4, but are lowered, defunct or banned ... a much lower return in the long run.
Does google wait until each PR update to show backlinks to sites? Or better yet, why do some sites that show 300 backlinks in msn/yahoo not show any backlinks in google? PR update or not? If PR is based on backlinks, why do some sites who have backlinks from high PR sites, not show when checking in google? PS, Ganceann, I checked out your link building service in your sig. I believe that is the most effective way to backlink. Great idea there. My 2 cents.
Backlink updates are independant of PR updates, usually more frequent Google don't show all the backlinks that they know about