Is PR affected by Traffic?

pr, traffic, cause, increase, decrease, page rank

[warth0g]

After watching a site for 2.5 years it seems to me that PR updates seem to follow traffic changes by several weeks or months. This has been pretty well documented by members here.

Additionally I have seen another trend that I don't think has been discussed. It appears to me that traffic seems to affect PR. Let me give an example.

A site I have received a duplicate content penalty and received the page 5 penalty. This site was a PR 7 - traffic dropped from 10,000 uniques a day to 1,000 a day.

This happened 6 weeks ago, yesterday the PR dropped to 6 - no backlinks changed, none of my other sites changed.

The site was a PR 6 back in 05, and I noticed a big spike in traffic one day, then about 2 months later my PR jumped to a PR 7.

Now, I suppose the argument could be made that the penalty caused a -1 in PR but I think its quite possible that PR is directly affected by traffic.

Thoughts?

[tedster]

The reason this idea hasn't been discussed is because it is not true. Ranking itself may or may not be directly affected by traffic (to whatever degree Google can get traffic data) but PR is about links and only about links. Sometimes toolbar PR is even incorrect and buggy.

[warth0g]

If its about links and only links how do you explain a PR 7 for 12 months then with no change in backlinks a drop in PR after traffic dropped?

[trakkerguy]

PR of backlinks could have changed. Or G discounting some backlinks it doesn't "like" anymore.

[dailypress]

I would disagree as well. One of my websites has a PR of 5/10 with much much less traffic than my other website with a PR of 4/10.

[BigDave]

Have you considered that the cause and effect could be going the other way?

The PageRank that Google uses to calculate the SERPs is real time, the toolbar PR is only updated every few months and it is usually weeks out of date when that happens.

If your real PR went up 6 weeks ago, and your traffic increased because of it, then the update yesterday finally showed it, it might seem like the increase in traffic caused the increase in PR. But that would be wrong.

PR is, and always has been about links and only links. That hasn't changed and there is no reason for that to change.

Any other factors used in the algo, are *other* factors used in the algo. There is no reason for them to be factored into the PR calculation.

[SeoCatfish]

Yeah there is no way that traffic affects Page Rank brother. It is not part of the mathematical formula, nor does Google know how much traffic you have. Only the other hand, the internal Page Rank values that constitute the numbers 1 through 10 on the tool bar do change. So just because your (hypothetically speaking) 1000 internal real page rank points used to be good enough to be a PR5 on the toolbar, it may be at the next calculation that that score falls into the PR4 category. The 1 - 10 PR values in the tool bar represent blocks of actual Page Rank numbers. These value markers may change each time the process is updated. Therefore it is possible for your Page Rank to move up or down without any changes to your links and regardless of your traffic numbers.

[MThiessen]

Yeah it don't effect traffic. I have a PR5 site that does easily 10 TIMES the traffic of my PR7 site...

[peterdaly]

BigDave and SeoCatfish follow my thinking. Your PR drops and your traffic drops along with it. However, you don't see the PR drop on the toolbar for 3 months.

The PR drop is actually happening as much a 3 months earlier than what the toolbar indicates.

Your traffic drops when the PR drops, and probably because the PR drops.

[kidder]

I gave up on this one after gettting a little flamed..... There is a lot of guessing going on here mixed in with a few facts. Google pretty much has us on a string, just build your sites and entertain your users. Traffic will follow - that is a fact.

[Halfdeck]

Traffic, a factor? I don't think so.

PageRank = (1 - d) + d(sum of PageRank/links per page)

[produces PageRank numbers > 10, sum of all PageRanks = the number of pages on the web]

or

PageRank = (1 - d)/N + d(sum of PageRank/links per page)

[produces floats between 0 and 1; sum of all PageRanks = 1]

d is a constant. N is the number of pages on the Web.

---

Curve balls:

- A link's PageRank may be devalued depending on intent (exchanged/paid links IF detected)
- NOFOLLOW kills PageRank.
- Link to NOINDEXED pages is probably ignored.
- Google may guestimate the PageRanks of newly discovered URLs to avoid restarting PageRank iteration from scratch.

-----

Traffic is not a factor.

[Whitey]

PR has nothing to do with traffic. But ........

..... there is some sort of relationship with PR in the "secret soup" [ search result algorithms ].

PR is likely to be one of the *many* significant factors influencing positioning built out of it's complex assessments of the *quality* score.

Traffic is likely being monitored by Google and potentially [ if not already ] also part of a *popularity* score IMO

Herein lies a puzzle - what come's first to establish the overall consideration.

My guess is that since unique content and quality links built on a well architected site are being espoused by Google and senior members as fundamental foundation blocks that create PR , it is therefore reasonable to assume that the consequential PR score resonating from this does have a relationship to traffic - albeit complex for us folks who are excluded from the secrets at G .

I'd encourage good folks to see things from a different perspective and play with the definitions/intepretations a little. I thinks this all boils down to some simple fundamentals - searching for the exact details will scramble the average webmaster/site owners's brains.

btw - Tedster - I remember somewhere on some threads a while back you questioned members on whether SERP's were influenced by traffic. An interesting hunch i thought.

[edited by: Whitey at 12:40 am (utc) on Feb. 1, 2007]

[Marcia]

Thread from a while back

Using Usage Statistics in Search [webmasterworld.com]

Affecting rankings isn't the same as affecting PR.

[Whitey]

Marcia - Hmmm .... interesting.... i like your direction.

I'm hungry for another seperate thread of opinions to appear on traffic/click thru /keyword management to assist positioning control by G .... a variant on this threads theme.

[SeoCatfish]

well I think it is pretty clear that if Google uses click through rates in PPC to help determine relevancy, they probably also do so in Organic.

I would agree that if your PR drops, your rankings may drop (depending on how relevant the links were that dropped), and if your rankings drop, then of coarse your traffic drops. But that is a one trip. If your traffic drops, there are a number of potential variables that can cause this, not just a drop in PR. But certainly keeping track of your most powerful links, where they come from and whether they still link to you at any given time is an important tool in understanding what is causing traffic drops.

But what I am saying is, that your traffic level at any given moment, has NOTHING to do with your page rank which is a mathematical formula that brings a network of nodes to a steady state based on connectivity.

Good discussion though. Cheers.