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"To find the value of an incoming link look at the PR of the source page, and divide it by the number of links on that page. It's very possible to get a PR of 6 or 7 from only a handful of incoming links if your links are "weighty" enough." is kind of an over simplification, don't you think?
"Google is a newer search engine, and has never had a problem with query strings. However, some dynamic pages can still throw Google for a loop." is not exactly true.
So what is the authoritative source for this article. Seems to me as if this journalist read some stuff on WebmasterWorld and composed an article. I'm no expert on SEO - more like an apprentice in his first year. And I can't claim any special knowledge on Google. But this journalist is holding himself out as some sort of expert. IMHO, he isn't one and shouldn't be writing articles about Google.
>>"It's very possible to get a PR of 6 or 7 from only a handful of incoming links if your links are 'weighty' enough"<<
I built a new site and gave it a link from my PR7 site. Google assigned the new site a PR6 right out of the shoot. The link from the PR7 site was the only external link the new site had.
So I think the consensus is, go after DMOZ, Yahoo, Looksmart, etc. Then keep right on going for every other link you can get!
However, I do disagree with myth number 7. I've seen lots of my own pages where Google displayed something from the meta tags instead of text matching. I don't know why and I don't care. Afterall, it only takes me 60 seconds to write and insert the meta tags I want for each page. I don't think they are doing anything to hurt me but I don't count on meta tags alone for my respective page to rank well.
Zapatista
SitePoint's pretty popular, though, so the fact that the guy writes there means he has credibility and a number of people are going to take all of this article as accurate. And the reader score on the article right now is 8.6 of 10, so the evidence is that readers are accepting that the content is accurate.
>Myth #1: The Higher Your Google PageRank (PR), the Higher You'll be in the Search Results Listing
Half true. A pr1 site is not going to beat a pr10 site. A pr3 site listed for "apple" is not going beat a pr8 site listed for apple.
If the apple site had been a pr3 or 2, it would not even have been in the running to argue about rankings. Of course a higher pr, means a higher rankings, but it does not mean it is going to trump all those with a lower pr. There has to be relevance for a term.
>Myth #2: The Google Toolbar will List Your Actual PageRank
Rounding to the nearest whole number and scaled 1 to 10. Sure it does. ;-)
>Myth # 3: PageRank is a Value Based on the Number of Incoming Links to Your Site
True, it's based on the quality (eg: pr value) of the incoming links.
>Myth # 4
Yep, dead obvious.
>Myth #5: Being Listed in the Open Directory Project Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus
Specifically, no. Reality? Helps Big Time because ODP links are viral in nature. Those links breed with other sites that carry the odp and when people are looking for links. Including yahoo directory editors when they need to flush out a category - the odp is the first stop for them. I've had several links come right out of the odp and into Yahoo by ya'surfers looking for links.
>Myth #6: Being Listed in Yahoo! Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus
see #5. A link from a pr3 category in yahoo, will do more for your page rank than a link from a pr8 site.
So, does it give you a "special page rank bonus"? Sure it does.
>Myth #7: Google Uses Meta Tags
Keywords or Description?
We all know they can use a description, but keywords? As chris said, best left as an exercise for the reader.
>Myth # 9: Google Will Not List Your Site, or Penalize it, if you use Popups
I don't think the jury is in on that one.
>Myth # 10: Google will Penalize you if You're Linked to by a Link Farm
Until the infamous "hand check". Who wants the scrutiny...
Writing this type article from entirely one's own view weakens it. A lot. If the author did rely on other expert sources, they are not cited. Therefore, I can only assume he is giving his own educated opinions. But that is not good enough. And like someone else pointed out, most readers will accept it as 100 percent fact.
The author did cite some links to discussion threads and basic links on toolbar, dmoz, etc. But those are not strong enough sources to be used in this particular article.
Offering one's opinion is fine on a forum like webmasterworld or the discussion threads of sitepoint. However, in an article which attempted to be of high caliber, he really should have interviewed other experts and quoted them.
He should have dug a little deeper in doing his homework for this article. He weakened the credibility of it by not doing so.
But that's just my opinion. :-) What do I know.
Zapatista
How would I know? But my immediate impression is that you are not exactly an ignoramus in matters SEO. Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Zapatista. I look forward to reading more posts from your hand.
> the infamous "hand check"
Myth #11: Google never hand check reported websites.
Myth #12: Google hand check a lot.
Troels
His original statement was "It's very possible.." therefore one finding in support of that statement DOES make it true that it is "possible," as he stated.
Self proclaimed experts shouldn't be writing things like: "Well, this statement may or not be true." ie, "It's very possible."
Instead, they should present both sides of the topic through qualified sources. This approach presents a well-rounded article in which both "sides" are given to a debatable topic.
IF he is discussing a debatable topic such as this one, he should have presented both sides and been more in depth about it.
That's my 2 cents.
[edited by: Zapatista at 9:46 pm (utc) on Dec. 26, 2002]
BUT, look what he did do!
His article gets him links from a PR5 page on promotionbase to each of his three sites (PR5, 6 & 7). His profile page on sitepoint also nets three PR5 links to each of his sites. And his profile list seven other articles on webmasterbase and ecommercebase, all linking to his three sites from PR6 pages.
That's an example to follow (now I just have to find those 48-hour days).
Jim
That's not a myth - GoogleGuy has admitted (here) that Google will, from time to time, do hand edits - but they prefer not to (what he said).
From the responses to the article, it seems that it's best used as an excellent example of 'self promotion' and not, it seems, Google Mythology.
Of course, that's only my perspective.
No. But _no_ 'hand check' is. (My vote for #11)
And lots of 'hand check' is too. (My vote for #12)
I think you guys are being too hard on the author. While there was nothing really eye-opening for me, I take direct issue with very little in the article.
I see the "Specific PageRank" as just his way of explaining that which is well accepted: you gotta have some degree of relevance (on page or off page factors) to a search for your PR to help you rank well.
>taxpod:"...some sort of expert. IMHO, he isn't one and shouldn't be writing articles about Google."
Disagree. My definition of "expert" may differ from yours but, in relative terms, I think he's an expert just like most members here are really experts in SEO. Yes, I agree that almost everything in the article is right here at WebmasterWorld. But most people/surfers/webmasters/developers are not familiar enough with Google to be able to compile this article. There's a couple hundred million people that have access to WebmasterWorld. I'd say that less than 1/100 of 1% has the knowledge of Google to compile this article.
I'd reckon that 95% of us here do very little (if any) groundbreaking SEO research. Most of us read alot, consider the sources of (sometimes conflicting) forum input, plug in our own experience and then do some trial & error based on our best guess. If you do that and produce some nice results on a consistant basis, I think you qualify as expert in SEO. Maybe not an expert enough to present at SES 2003 but expert compared to 99% of the web designers/developers out there.
I read thru the article twice while going over BT's post. I think you guys are saying the same thing on Myths #1-5 & 8.
Brett, am I reading this right?
"A link from a pr3 category in yahoo, will do more for your page rank than a link from a pr8 site."
That's strong & not what I thought. You'd rather have a link on Yahoo>Biz>Shopping>Stuff>Holiday>Blue>Fuzzy>Widgets>For_Penguins at PR3 than from the penguins.org homepage with PR8? From a pure PR standpoint?
On #7, I think it's obvious that he's referring to the meta kw tag. And that's what most non-seo readers will think when they see "meta tag."
#9, hmmm.
On #10, he's only debunking a penalty for having a link *from* a farm. If you're squeaky clean & have followed BT's 12 months of Google, I don't see how that link could possibly hurt you.
I think it's a good article. Kinda like a summary that many of us might put together for a client or a non-seo web designer.
rmjvol
To find the value of an incoming link look at the PR of the source page, and divide it by the number of links on that page.
Does anyone have any sense that this is correct?
in his article he links to a forum posting of his, on which he did an experiment.
In itself the experiment has some good thinking, but I think his data is too limited to be of any proof for a log factor of 4. At least my own findings tell me it has to be higher.
Just one experiment: check your own pages from your site map. If a site map has 100 links and a PR of 4, then 4 x 4 x 4 = 64, take into consideration the dampening factor of say 0,85 = 75, then your linked to internal page with only one link from your site map would have a PR1 or PR0 in his log factor of 4.
Powdork:
...didn't mention anchor text.
...so what Google does is examine the context of your incoming links...
And I don't think he necessarily needs to hit anchor text or the many other aspects of Google that he skipped in this article. The article isn't "How Google Works." (that currently takes 87,395 posts)
The purpose of this article is to correct the most popular Google myths.
...look at the PR of the source page, and divide it by the number of links on that page.I think it's an oversimplification, a poor one. In a thread he referenced [sitepointforums.com] he said this:
It has a PR of 6. There are probably about 40 links on it.So each link on that page gets whatever PR6/40 is - and it is also modified further by the "dampening factor" which is a small amount applied to every link to bring total pagerank down.
Based on merely my observations, I think he's off on the "...exponential base of 4." But I wouldn't be surprised if it's not as simple as being exponentially linear. (is that a real phrase?) ie maybe it's a power of 4 at some point on the PR scale and it's different at other points.
rmjvol
>>It has to be much higher than 4. I've seen 8 - 9 kicked around and that definitely makes more sense to me.
I'd say that base 6 has been guesstimated more here at WebmasterWorld.
So each link on that page gets whatever PR6/40 is
Raising it to 6 will bring it to 60M page votes for PR10, which is starting to get a lot more reasonable. 9 puts it at 3.5 billion.
"I'd reckon that 95% of us here do very little (if any) groundbreaking SEO research. Most of us read alot, consider the sources of (sometimes conflicting) forum input, plug in our own experience and then do some trial & error based on our best guess. If you do that and produce some nice results on a consistant basis, I think you qualify as expert in SEO."
Seems to be working for me. I don't understand even half of the stuff on WebMasterWorld, but I reckon I could take a poorly ranked site and make it better. Am I an expert? There is enough information on this site to help anyone. The Google Knowledge Base and the 12 Months to a successful site can make us all "experts"!
A lot of what is written here is just opinion, and the article that started this thread is another opinion. There can be very few people who really know how Google works. Probably even some of the top dogs at Google couldn't tell you. It just works! It's not perfected, and that's why we keep seeing the algo changing, and more emphasis being given to one factor or another, and people either crying with pain or delight as their rankings change.
In any case, the power that Google has over the search engine world is bound to create discussion. Maybe the author of the article should join this forum? The more the merrier!
