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I'm the webmaster of a website with a big pagerank. I'm often asked by other websites that want to have a link on my pages. Sometimes, those websites do not have the same language...
Before, links were made for the users and now they are here for google.
I think that this situation is due to the view of the pagerank in the google toolbar. With this tool, webmasters are only focused on their pagerank (even if the view is not precise).
I propose (do not shoot me) the end of the pagerank in the googlebar to reduce the crazy interest for this.
I would like your opinion about that. What is the interest of viewing the pagerank in the googlebar unless destroying google's algo.
I feel the same way and operate accordingly.
trilliadjedi:
"PR *is* the factor that matters, all else (keyword density, title and anchor text etc) being equal. That's unfortunate maybe, but very much a fact."
PR like social engineering is a grand, eloqent concept
that falls far short of achieving the designers "dreams".
Individual websites should be ranked on keyword density, title and anchor text etc and rise and fall on these merits
and not have a biasing factor (PR) thrown in which in fact
in most cases is not credible.
TJ
I had a link from my banned site to one of my other sites a PR7 site, wich is dropped to PR4 now. All in the same periode. I found this at least strange.
I very much believe that something else caused the drop. Were both sites hosted on the same machine using virtual hosting on one IP address? Did your PR7 site link back to the penalised site? Is it linking to other sites which have since been penalised?
I'm more than happy to be proved wrong. In which case I will actually stop using google as a user whenever I'm looking for something, because that actually decreases the usability of the results and casts doubt on googles credibilty.
So, I think the very moment a site is penalized it will affect the outbound links on it at that time.
Again, if you're right, that's the most stupid thing that google have ever done, and their credibility will fast disintegrate. Word spreads on the internet *very* quickly.
A banned site will not be crawled anymore isn't it?
It becomes useless for bad purposes.
No problem, create the site, put links to all your competitors in it, then spam google and get it banned.
I'm not trying to argue against you, because I have no evidence to prove that you are wrong. But do you see my point? Is it likely that google would allow my example of getting a site banned to kill of competitors?
I'd really be amazed and quite shocked if that were the case.
TJ
Are you?
Ok then, sticky me your url and I will put it on my banned site for free. :-)
Ok then, sticky me your url and I will put it on my banned site for free. :-)
LOL
Like I said, I have no evidence to say that you're wrong, but logic, and the balance of probability, would say that you are.
No, I'm not going to stake the reputation (in googles eyes) of my site on it!
If you want to sticky me your banned site, I'm happy to take a look and see if there's something you've missed that may be another reason for the drop in PR.
TJ
Let us all start protecting our links pages and outbound links from being indexed. After a certain time Google's links policy will be history.
For competitive reasons (PageRank) and to preserve the organic nature of the Web ("do no evil"), it's essential to Google that most Web sites continue to use outbound links. What's more, outbound links may be one small indicator of site quality for a search engine that has a stated mission of organizing the Web's information (as opposed to just organizing the Web's e-commerce pages).
If Google were to feel that Webmasters were avoiding outbound links for selfish business reasons, and that such avoidance was a threat to the PageRank concept and to the organic nature of the Web, it could modify its algorithm to favor pages or sites with outbound links. The optimum time to do this would be after "theming" has become part of the algorithm, since Google would then be making judgments about entire sites or section of sites and not just individual pages.
Don't misunderstand me: I'm not talking about penalties for sites that have no outbound links; I'm simply saying that Google could give a subtle but meaningful boost to sites with outbound links, on the theory that this would be good for both Google's PageRank concept and the Web.
I already dropped all outbound links from all of my web sites.
To each his own. I have thousands of outbound links, and they've helped me get unsolicited inbound links from major reference directories, media sites, and corporate sites. My Google PageRank and SERP rankings continue to climb, even as I add new links to my site. Who knows? Maybe Google is already giving a boost to site owners whose linking practices "do no evil" to PageRank or the organic nature of the Web.
I dont think an inbound link can harm you because it is in theory the sender that is voting for it, but it just wont carry any weight.
I think google do have a responsability to the internet. They are a very large factor on the web today and have a huge responsability. Having said that , they do still offer the best results.
It would be good if they would enlighten us slightly as as to the rules and make it easier to find out if a site has been penalised as oposed to waiting months to see if page rank will return.
You have a site that got PR0 - does it happen to be on the same IP address (or nearly the same) as the site that went from 7 to 4?
Google seems to hand out penalties to whole groups of domains, based on IP addresses - this is a real painful thing for people who are on virtual hosts that share a single IP address for multiple domains, you can end up punished for the acts of someone you don't know.
I have also noticed that in the domain resale market, google rank is pushed when it is good, not mentioned when it is bad, with effect on the value of the domain. Therefore, the visibility of PR ranking to the public has even changed the value of domain names themselves.
PR forces people to accept and decline links based not on what they perceive the value of the information (or traffic, or exposure) on the other site, but rather if the PR is going to be good or not. It creates a sort of self-fulfilling judgement system... higher PR sites link to higher PR sites, and they keep high PR, lower PR sites can't get a link so they stay low - even if they have good information, etc.
It is getting to be pretty unnatural.
Alex
PR forces people to accept and decline links based not on what they perceive the value of the information (or traffic, or exposure) on the other site, but rather if the PR is going to be good or not. It creates a sort of self-fulfilling judgement system... higher PR sites link to higher PR sites, and they keep high PR, lower PR sites can't get a link so they stay low - even if they have good information, etc.
I suspect that's more true of e-commerce sites than of editorial sites, since editorial sites (a.k.a. content sites) are more likely to be judged on their quality and utility to the reader.
As the editor of a content site, I pick links that are relevant to the topic at hand and useful to my readers--regardless of their PR, and regardless of whether they're linking back to my site. (I always welcome reciprocal links, and I encourage them on my "submit a URL" page, but I link to thousands of sites that don't link to me, because most of my outbound links were found through search instead of being submitted.)
I suspect that's more true of e-commerce sites than of editorial sites, since editorial sites (a.k.a. content sites) are more likely to be judged on their quality and utility to the reader.
How true! I wish Google's query had the option of retrieving only editorial or non-commercial sites because PR has significance there. Some way has to be devided to classify sites into categories of commercial and non-commercial.
Putting up articifial barriers of any sort just creates new pathways to get past the barrier. PR is just one of those barriers that people are finding ways around.
Alex
If you did that, commercial sites would create fake non-commercial sites with links off that went to their commercial sites...
"fake non-commercial sites"? you mean widget corp. setting up a site with all sorts of useful information about widget history, demographics, and design, and links to their corporate site?
I'd say that would be much much better than just widget corp.'s sales site coming up top in the searches.
i really think that an `editorial`/`content` site only option on google could be the next new innovation to keep google ahead like page rank did before.
So they have to keep an eye at fairness in that game of action (= improving algo, inventing PR a.s.o.) and reaction (SEO).
The crucial point IMHO is:
Google's attempt to serve as good SERPs as possible and Google's 'responsibility' seem to work together.
For me that's not idealistic but logical.
This game of action and reaction iterates.
Google changes the internet. SEO changes the internet.
That's evolution.
Putting up articifial barriers of any sort just creates new pathways to get past the barrier. PR is just one of those barriers that people are finding ways around.
I agree that any artifical barrier creates more problems in general. However, if I search for non-commercial sites, any I am misled to some commercial site acting like a non-commercial site, it will have at least two reactions:
1. Since I was not looking to buy anything, I will ignore that site completely
2. Since my time was wasted by that site, I will make sure that in future when I buy that keyword product, I will not visit that site
And depending upon my mood that day, I will complain to Google and other SEs.
Frankly, I am willing to pay a SE some amount to retrieve only editorial pages and make my search commercial-free, just like cable TV etc.
Another sade evolution of the PR story. In the struggle to achieve a higher ranking, webmasters became snitches.
What a mess.
willing to pay a SE some amount to retrieve only editorial pages and make my search commercial-free
Some way has to be devided to classify sites into categories of commercial and non-commercial.
Agreed, but probably impossible to make work.
When Google started out, the web wasn't the commercial place it is today. Google's objective is to return the best results for your search.
For an informational (read non-commercial) search, this is "easy", and is what Google does extremely well.
For a commercial search, Google is useless, although not that you can blame Google. If you're searching for a website providing service "X", the best search result for you [all other things considered equal] would be the website that provides "X" for the lowest cost. Cost is something that is not factored into Google (or any other search engines) algos.
They might be trying to address this with Froogle.
a website providing service "X", the best search result for you [all other things considered equal] would be the website that provides "X" for the lowest cost
well said. i doubt many people record their favourite shopping sites as links on their webpages, i suspect the vast majority of links to commercial [e.g. shopping] sites in most sectors are affilate/paid for variety.
you outline the problem very well. the problem with the `informational` searches is when commercial and non-commercical overlap... the searcher wants content/editorial information... and all they get are highly SEOed and PR spammed commerical sites. agree?
The two sites are in the same IP range.
PRO site = xxx.xx.38.187
other site = xxx.xx.32.249
Are there any other sites on the server that hosts your banned website or is it dedicated?
TJ
I always use dedicated IP addresses.
There must be a reason for your drop in PR, but I'm 99.9% certain that it is not because a banned site is linking to you....
TJ
LOL.
The Iraqi Information Minister lives.
1. Show webmasters that google values their votes for other sites.
2. To give webmasters something to concentrate on, that in most cases does not does not really harm the search results.
3. Extra punishment to spammers that have been caught. Your peers will notice.
Yes, I said that before and I'm totaly disagree with it now.
I had links from two of my other sites to my banned site.
One of these sites went from PR4 to PRO and the other went from PR7 to PR4.
So, even when you link to your own sites, you have to be very carefull these day's.
From a surfer's point of view, it *is* a mark of the quality of the site. If there was no Google toolbar, then I'd slum it with Alexa which tries to do the same thing (but in a different way).
And the Google directory relies on PR to make it useful. Looking for an authorititave site on a particular topic? Easy peasy with the Google directory.
Obfuscating the real page rank will only really help SEOs because they'll just deduce the PR in different ways. Everyone else (including visitors) will be in the dark.
What about Real Estate Agents (for example) - they want to have links framed to various sites in the community as good tools for users to check out an area? Thats not useful? I have a few Clients (Realtors) that have sold houses and got new clients that can argue this fact..
What about a link from a Web Design Services site to a place that offers good web hosting? Still not useful?
What about the link on this site that sometimes appears in the upper right hand corner? Again not useful to some?
What about these sites that offer some affiliate spot advertising? I know many that make some good extra cash doing this... But I guess cash isnt useful?
It seems the people who dislike PR on the toolbar either have low PR or get pestered because of their high PR.
Not necessarily. I have a PR of 6, which is pretty middle-of-the-road, but I can see why including PR in the toolbar might have been a mistake. Google might have been better off keeping people in the dark, and users might be better off, too (since anything that makes the SE spammer's job harder is likely to be good for users in the long run).
Still, the cat has been out of the bag for a long time, and removing the PR indicator from the toolbar probably wouldn't have much benefit at this late date.
From a surfer's point of view, it *is* a mark of the quality of the site.
I doubt if 1 in 100 Web surfers look at a site's PR in the Google toolbar (assuming that they even have the toolbar installed). Don't confuse the needs of Webmaster World users with the needs or interest of the general Internet population.
In any case, there's no need to judge a site by its PR in the Google toobar. The most accurate way of making a judgment is to look at what's on the page.
