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Is anyone else seeing this? Could this be because Google's Page Rank tool is broken and that things will return to how it was when everything is fixed?
I'm not so sure we can say that PR is in any way broken. It's more than likely alive, well and kicking, working just as it's supposed to. IMHO it's more like we're not getting the disclosure of PR that we'd like to be getting. That's more like smart than broke.
Some folks around learned to play PR like a fiddle, so withholding disclosure is, IMHO, an attempt to prevent the fiddle-playing SEO species from propogating itself and multiplying any further.
Let's call it an attempt at ecology - SEO population control.
[edited by: Marcia at 7:06 am (utc) on July 30, 2003]
Our page rank has helped us out but I agree that there are other factors involved.
In other words, do you think the level of competitiveness is indicative of how much weight PR carries in terms of scoring, and that the weight PR carries varies proportionately according to the difference in the competitive level of different search terms?
I see no reason for PR to take a different effect on say searches involving a notoriously spammed market such as porn or viagra (PR has little effect due to manipulation and buying of links) or a purely educational/content market (PR plays more effect due to it being more likely that people are linking to a site for its content)
I feel like my brain is melting sometimes when reading this forum, hope the above makes sense ;)
Allinanchor dwarfs pagerank for one word searches to a degree that pagerank isn't worth mentioning.
Agreed. Which is why KEYWORD.com domains are so hard to beat in one word searches.
Back to the topic of this thread...
I still feel that PR is extremely important, just not as important as some might think.
Most of the time when you see a low PR site beating a high PR site, that low PR site is 100X better optimized for the specific keyword.
A poorly optimized site will lose regardless of its PR.
How come sites with grey bars are even in the index at all?
I've been trying to learn about this in the forum, but I havn't found a good answer yet. Maybe I just havn't come across the proper thread. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks : )
If Page Rank isn't broken, then how come I see sites with a PR of 5 one day and a grey bar the next? And even with this fluctuation in Page Rank, the sites are maintaining there position grey bar or not.
We are being groomed for the elimination of PageRank from the toolbar. If there is one thing in Google's history that has caused more problems with their index, it was the release of the Toolbar. Think about it, they exposed one of the most important elements of their algo by making PageRank public. Hence all the discussion that has taken place here since it was first launched.
Using the PageRank indicator yesterday, today and tomorrow will be of no use to any sites that have been included in the index over the past 90-120 days. I think there was a point where they stopped showing calculated PageRank on new sites (if that is possible).
Again, this is just a wild assumption on my part. But think about it, the worst abuse Google has experienced comes from the PageRank displayed in the Toolbar. Now would be the time to eliminate it whilst they move forward with the master plan. It was a neat little gadget during its time, but now it is time to move on to bigger and better things like building compliant web sites [webmasterworld.com]. ;)
I knew something was happening and your insight makes the most sense so far. If it does happen, I will be sad and glad to see PageRank go. But it's still the same old story - build good sites and get good results.
Google had all sorts of problems crawling the internet accurately, and crawling is the foundation of pagerank. It's no surprise that after the crawl went "broken" that so did publicly displayed pagerank. There is no big mystery here. Google is always out crawling, but both backlinks and pagerank are not updated. They will be when Google is comfortable with releasing something up to their acceptable quality standards. Clearly they have been unable to do that for a few months now. Maybe they will be able to tomorrow...
cabowabo - google does not display all backlinks it has recorded to public and what if they make a change in the "PR formula" your tools no longer work.
We are being groomed for the elimination of PageRank from the toolbar.
Why would we have to be "groomed"? If Google decided they didn't want to display PageRank on the toolbar, they could just stop doing so -- there'd be no reason to display inaccurate or unreliable results for a time before dropping it.
Why would we have to be "groomed"?
Because We as a community have a very loud voice when it comes to the Toolbar. If they were to just take it away today, the public relations fallout with the webmaster community may be somewhat hard to manage.
If they (Google) decide to wean us from the PageRank indicator, it makes sense to make it look like it is broke and then wait for everyone to slowly come off of their PageRank Jones and then take it away. My wild guess is that we've been seeing that weaning over the past few months.
Yes, PageRank is displayed in the 2.0 Beta version of the Toolbar. Beta versions don't always go live with the functions they had at inception. They could easily take it away in the final release. By that time all of us will have gone Cold Turkey and there won't be that many discussions on PageRank anymore. Just like the monthly updates. Change is afoot. ;)
Ya'll do know that I'm just really out there in left field with this one. I think it is worth the debate.
ogletree, there seems to be a critical threshhold at a certain point; it's quite a hurdle to get from PR6 to PR7.
A PR6 with over 1K links can be and is beaten by a measly low PR4 that's well optimized - not in a highly desirable, competitive big $ space though. Getting up to PR7 is a whole different ball game, and won't be achieved by those type of sites. Plain and simple, there aren't informational sites worthy of PR7 or higher in some sectors, as a rule, and there certainly isn't enough financial potential to warrant anyone in their right mind buying links.
In cases where a really commercial site in a big money field has a PR7 or PR8 you can almost bet that it isn't because they have links for their fabulous quality information. It's more than likely that they bought or very cleverly finagled their way into it beyond what the average webmaster can and will do. Which is a skill-set of its own, no doubt about it.
Also, what does it take to get from a PR7 to a PR8
Thanks for all your help.
IMO Yes absolutely...if the competition is high. In my experience where competition is high good clean optimization (Title, description, H1, text with kw, text links etc.) absolutely will not do it. I have had sites that were INMO perfectly optimized but didn't rank for $%#^ in Google. But then when I got some good PR 4 and 5 links, those rankings shot to the top (1-3).
Interesting to note that the well optimized sites without links ranked well (#1-4) on MSN (Ink); even ATW. Add the links and rank is high both MSN and Yaolhoogle.
Where the competition has been little, good straight up optimization without links has gotten me good top 5 placings in Google.
In my experience you can not rank well in a competitive industry, on Google, without good authoritative links.
Look harder. It happens all the time.
It happens because many PR7 sites I see are broad focused portals and a lower PR site out ranking them is usually narrowly focused and done all the SEO stuff correctly.
That used to be the case, no longer.
I can point to all kinds of examples of toolbar PR6-8 pages getting spanked by PR3-5 in competitive serps. Toolbar PR in relation to weighting went south a few months ago imho.
I see higher allinanchor best a higher PR in many instances.
