Why does a PR '0' get top listings?

I can't work it out

[TimmyMagic]

Hi,

Suppose I am selling Widgets and I enter Widgets in Google. The no.1 on the list is not suprisingly widgets.com. This has a PR6.

But 50% of the sites in the top 10 did not even have a PR. So my question is, how do they get top spots?

Tim

P.S. I'm not selling widgets.

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 7:04 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2003]

[WebGuerrilla]

1. Just because you can't see any PR on the toolbar, doesn't mean that the page doesn't have any. Google has admitted that the toolbar display is often inaccurate.

2. In order to enable users to see the fresh content that they are adding to the database on a daily basis, you have to give that content a pass when it comes to PR. It's brand new content and it won't have any real PR until the numbers are crunched on the entire database. That doesn't happen on a daily basis.

[bakedjake]

So my question is, how do they get top spots?

PR isn't a measurement of relevancy. It's a measure of popularity. Were those sites the most relevant for your query?

[JuniorOptimizer]

Those sites all probably have tons of anchor text for "widgets". Their PR just hasn't updated yet.

[Arnett]

But 50% of the sites in the top 10 did not even have a PR. So my question is, how do they get top spots?

I never cease to be stunned at the number of people who still believe that pagerank is the sole source of high ranking. Pagerank is only one of 100 factors that determine search results position. Google has several advanced operators that will help you understand their ranking algorithm:

allintext:search term - shows pages with the search term in the text ranked in order.

intext:search term - shows pages with the first word of the search term in the text and the second word anywhere in the document.

allintitle:search term - shows pages with the search term in the title in ranked order.

intitle:search term - shows pages with the first word of the search term in the title and the second word anywhere in the document.

allinanchor:search term - shows pages with the search term in the anchor text of links in ranked order.

inanchor:search term - shows pages with the first word of the search term in the anchor text of links and the second word anywhere in the document.

allinurl:search term - shows pages with the search term in the url in ranked order.

inurl:search term - shows pages with the first word of the search term in the url and the second word anywhere in the document.

Top ranked sites generally rank highly in more than one of these searches. Depending on the weight that Google is assigning to title,text,anchor text or url at any given time the ranking in the search results can change. I try to rank highly for allintext,allinanchor,allintitle and allinurl. That way if Google changes the weight of any of those factors in the algorithm my page should still be in good shape. Paying attention to the anchor text takes care of the PR factor.

[stcrim]

Also worth considering - many times sites with high PR may not match the search nearly as well as one with 1 or 0.

I have yet to be able to relate PR directly to the search results in a meaningful way.

-s-

[reuben101]

Thanks for that list Arnett! Very useful.

I noticed something today that made my quest for top billing for my kewords a little more bearable. Google doesn't even get top billing in Google for several obvious keywords (search, web, etc...)despite having a PR 10 and writing the algos. :)

[claus]

>> Google not top for "search"

It was a forthnight ago. These things change all the time, depending on where the weights are placed. Google's homepage is not especially optimized for anything but fast download.

[Arnett]

Thanks for that list Arnett! Very useful.

You're very welcome.

Until very recently the approach that I was taking when desinging sites and pages was

AllinTitle
AllinText
AllinAnchor
AllinUrl

After reading some of the posts this weekend I'm thinking more:

AllinAnchor
AllinText
AllinTitle
AllinUrl

Google seems to have demoted the weight of AllinTitle and increased the weight of AllinAnchor in their ranking alogrithm. It makes SEO more difficult unless you have control over the anchor text in all of your links. It may be an attempt on their part to "democratize" the results since they count inbound links as "votes" for a site.

[stcrim]

Inbound links are "too" controlable by the webmaster for their use as it relates to PR to much if any weight in actual "ranking".

Plus plus "G" understands the content value of an "island site" (one with no inbound links) may be far greater than one with hundreds or thousands of links.

Also, sites that traditionally have the most links (affiliate sites) are the ones least linked by "G".

Hmmmmmmmmm... could PR be smoke and mirrors?

-s-

[kaled]

allinurl:search term - shows pages with the search term in the url in ranked order.

Here's something flaky I discovered recently. If you have a page with the following
<SCRIPT SRC=MySuperCounter.pl></SCRIPT>
a search for allinurl:MySuperCounter will yield pages that use the script.

Well, this seems odd to me.

Getting back on topic, you can check PR more reliably using the Google directory (check the green bar on the left). Of course, this only works if the site is in the directory.

Kaled.

[claus]

>> you can check PR more reliably using the Google directory

Ahm, i'd say "you can get another PR figure for some sites using the Google directory" - none of us on the outside knows which is closest to the real thing, but they are different for some sites afaik.

/claus