Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
While looking for relevant link exchanges from other sites, I saw there is a "safe zone" in Pagerank. While I was unable to secure many link exchanges from my PR 2 site, the minute the green bar raised to 5 I didn't have a problem. Most of the related sites I was looking to exchange links/traffic with, had a 5-7 PR. So depending on your market there may be a different "safe zone" which is needed to convince other webmasters of similar sites to link to yours. Even though many sware by the one-way link, I found link exchanges with relevant sites the best FREE way to improve your traffic and ranking.
I came to conclusion that although Pagerank won't directly secure that high Google ranking, it will indirectly by allowing you to obtain more affiliations & link exchanges. Which has been and will be the key to sucess for my sites.
What do you think? Is it just my market or are there lots of "noob" webmasters who just care about pagerank when looking to exchange links? Therefore Pagerank is more valuable than people think.
I've got 10-some years of marketing experience and a re-org shifted me to the web department where I'm surrounded by nerds - no offense to anyone out there that identifies as such. :)
Never in my life have I heard more people shun the idea of PR (internally and otherwise) yet you better believe two weeks ago at 3:30am when one of our sites lost PR completely I got a call and was in the office within minutes - pajamas and all. If PR was so useless, why was I deprived of sleep for the following week?
The point is this... though PR may be a mystery to many od us, though it may be flawed in it's practicality, though it may be described as convoluted at best... what it is NOT is useless or without clout. We lost a site that brought in thousands of dollars per week because the Google PR tool sneezed, and I determined that it was more cost effective to just launch a new site and build a new reputation than it was to try and salvage the old one.
And if you need tPR only to convince other, lame webmasters that your site is good, why not inflate it artificially to any level - there were methods described on this forum to make tPR as high as you'd like, of course these fakes didn't affect Google ranking, but changed toolbar indication.
PageRank still has it's place in the algo, it's not so important as it used to, but it's one more thing that moves you up a bit in SERPs. There is only a confusion made by delayed updating of the toolbar PR.
One way links seam to have a lot more power over link exchanges. When it comes to links a link is a vote. I often wonder if 2 sites voting for each other sore of levels out any weight that was passed with each.
Mack.
I've read a lot of the same stuff: "Pagerank is oldschool" and "Pagerank is worthless now"
Of course PR matters. Its an important factor, but not the only one.
Fact is, virtually NObody really knows what their PR is! All we see is toolbar PR or equivalent.
The next roll of the dice is vitally important, BUT not even a casino operator
knows that (unless he's way crooked of course).
So, as important as PR is, many/most assume that its a waste of time to
fuss over an unknown number.
I can't argue with that.
Unsatisfying as this may sound, I see value in simply providing good original content.
If the content is good enough, popularity, links, PR, and good SERPs positioning follow
automatically. Sorry for the sermon. -Larry
If the content is good enough, popularity, links, PR, and good SERPs positioning follow
automatically.
I keep reading this statement and having my own experience, I think it's true ONLY for informational sites and not that of selling nature.
If you have a site that sells jackets, it's very difficult and looooooong-term to obtain "votes" because of your good product quality or good product descriptions.
IMO PR was, is and probably will keep being the only indicator that all of us are aware of and let us understand the viewpoint of G for a particular site. And this makes it very valuable for all of us.
I also have seen the affects of better PR for linking purposes. HighPR+TopTen=LessTroubleFindingWebSitesToLinkToYou.
I have one site with a PR of 5 (according to the bar) that is in the top 3. It seems that once you achieve that status, other webmasters are falling over each other to exchange links with you.
I don't see how Google can work well without using that important concept.
BUT, SEO webmaster types figured out how to game the PR system, so these days merely having high PR and the keyword in the title does not get you to the top of the SERPs for that keyword.
So the importantance of PR has declined, but it would be silly to say that it's irrelevant. Furthermore, maybe there are now multiple PRs and the toolbar is only showing you the basic old PR?
Whatever formula Google is using, obviously they don't want you to know what it is so you can't game the new system.
It's not worth it to me to allow Google to collect personal data so I can see an imaginary numeric value posted on websites. Especially since that value is at least 90 days out of date, and is probably not the true value they internally use.
