what's the value of pagerank?

is it effective on search rank?

[redstorm]

through months of hard work, one of my sites gets a pagerank of 5. it even comes out of my expection! :)
But on the other hand, i do want to know the value of the high page rank, your kindly feedbacks are highly appreciated!

[Stefan]

It can help, but it really depends on how competitive your subject matter is. If you're selling or presenting targetted info on widgets that few others are covering, then a PR3 site can do better on certain searches than a PR8 will that only mentions the subject in passing. If you're competing for highly-targetted searches, then the higher the better. Anything below a PR3, though, you need to improve it - if a site only has PR2, then it definitely needs work to have much success in the serps (more inbounds).

Anecdotally, it seems the higher the PR is the more often your pages get crawled by G, so that's a plus.

At any rate, with a PR5 you're doing well.

[Pedent]

A lot of people argue that PR is no longer a big factor in where a page ranks. The main evidence for this is that pages with very little PR can outrank pages with a lot of PR, even when both are relevant to the search term.

However, even if PR doesn't directly help your ranking much, it is still an indicator of things that directly help your ranking a great deal. To get PR you need inbound links, and inbound links make a difference (particularly if the have the right anchor text).

High PR, even it if isn't worth chasing in itself, suggests that you're doing some of the right things to rank well.

[steveb]

Better PR helps pages rank higher.
Better PR helps get pages indexed faster and more often.
That's enough value for one thing that you should care about it.

[trillianjedi]

When your page about widgets is #1 for "widgets" you can stop working on getting inbound links to that page. When your page about flidgets is #1 for "flidgets" you can stop working on getting inbound links to that page.

The toolbar, which shows an out of date rounded figure for PageRank (internally to google an important factor in crawling and ranking), can be safely uninstalled. It has no place, or value, in SEO/SEM.

Get down to the business of getting good SERPS rankings. That's the only thing that has "value".

TJ

[seoArt]

The way I look at it is this:

Say you have 2 pages, exactly the same, with text about "widgets."

All other things being equal, the page with the higher Pagerank score will rank higher in the SERP's.

The way I understand it is that pagerank is generally determined by quantity and quality of inbound links.

There are many factors that affect how your page will rank. Pagerank is just one of those.

[steveb]

The day I stop doing things for pages that rank #1 is the day I get out of the business.

[Lorel]

A lot of people argue that PR is no longer a big factor in where a page ranks. The main evidence for this is that pages with very little PR can outrank pages with a lot of PR, even when both are relevant to the search term.

When you find this situation do you check the low pr/higher ranking site for spam? If so, report them in Google's spam report.