PR - What's it good for.

What effect will it actually have?

[roddy]

I have a small (50 page) and attached forum, running for three months. I've been indexed by Google for a couple of months and in this weekends update (can we call it that?) the forum went to PR 5 and my index page to 2 or 3. New backlinks also started showing and a couple of new pages entered the index.

Now, I' ve read plenty of posts saying that PR isn't as important as it once was, and we should all concentrate on content, which is fine by me. However, I'm curious as to what change my jump in PR will bring. More frequent updating of my site? Googlebot going deeper into my directory structure (I think she's gone as deep as she can)?

Thanks for any ideas.

Roddy
PS
I'm newish here, so apologies to the moderators if I've caused wear and tear on your delete buttons . . .

[bether2]

PR used to be one of the different factors that google used in determining where your pages will show up in the search results. I assume that google is still taking PR into account, but noone seems to know to what extent. So an increase in PR may cause your pages to move higher in the search results.

Maybe someone can help out here with some more ideas?

Beth

[ritualcoffee]

once we know the absolute PR impact google will change it. PR is extremely important in hyper competitive areas and will absolutely affect rank.

no matter what you hear about PR weighted in ranking, keep going at it - I've already seen reports of work being done on PR improvements.

[AthlonInside]

Hmm, what most people see the last 2 months is PR is not playing a very important role anymore like old times. We always heard sites having PR0 out perform a site with PR6 or 7 in competitive area.

Maybe now PR is just something that you can see, just for fun.

[amazed]

no its just that other factors may override PR e.g. regionalization in the SERPS. I suspect googlebot to act very much on Page Rank in regularity of updates etc.

[pmac]

>PR - What's it good for. <

Absolutely nothing, say it again.

Toolbar PR that is.

[steveb]

PR matters a lot in situations where there isn't anchor text. And it matters quite a lot where there isn't page title text.

How many sites have anchor text of "red widgets I can buy in Keokuk"? Right now anchor text rules for competitive, pithy terms, but the other factors are all that comes into play for more obscure ones.

In other words, when all other things are equal, having one of the algorithm points in your favor will get you the higher ranking. Having good PR, especially throughout your domain for pages with lots of unique page titles, is a very useful thing.

[roddy]

Thanks for all that folks. One more quick query

"Toolbar PR, that is"

So are there other flavours of PR?

My jump in PR doesn't seem to have affected my placing for keywords as yet . . .

Roddy

[bether2]

Roddy,

Most people seem to feel that the google toolbar is not a very good indicator of "true" PR as of late. For example, it sometimes shows a PR0 for highly popular sites that we know historically have had a high PR.

My jump in PR doesn't seem to have affected my placing for keywords as yet . . .

Since we are no longer seeing the "normal" update process, it could be that the increase in PR was taken into account long before the PR changed on the toolbar.

Or it could be that the increase in PR hasn't yet affected the search results.

Or... PR just might not mean as much as it used to.

Beth

<added>
Oh, other flavors of PR. 1) PR in the Google directory. 2) The "true" PR that only Google knows (which, these days, may or may not be showing on the toolbar). Someone else might chime in here about how there can be, for example, a low PR5 or a high PR5.
<added>

[GrinninGordon]

PR may determine whether a link on someone else's web site to your domain counts for anything or not.

PR will give you the edge over your nearest competitor all other things being equal.

"PR" is important with some search engines other than Google, so it is worth having anyway.

But do not spend too much time worrying about PR if your SEO target is Google. Spend time worrying about getting links with the right anchor text, on pages that don't just contain links and no text (such pages may be dampened), and with as many other site owners as possible.

[daamsie]

Regardless of how high Google factors PR into the search results - the higher your PR, the easier it is to get links from other sites, thereby boosting your site listing in Google. That is, providing they include some keywords in the anchor text ;-)

[John_Creed]

We always heard sites having PR0 out perform a site with PR6 or 7 in competitive area.

Those stories have to be false.

Most sites you see nowadays that have a 0 are not really a 0. The toolbar PR is out of whack and has been for quite some time. Only Google has the real PR's.

PR is still important.

If your PR increases than it's safe to assume that you should increase at least a few ranks in the SERPS.