Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Organic search for widgets. After the sponsored links, the first result on page one is big-bobs-discount.tld with a PR of 2. But on page 6 in the last place is example.com with a PR of 7.
Both have relevant content and, lets say for the sake of argument, the pages are nearly identical: product, text, price, etc. Both companies/web sites were launched at the same time.
WHY the different PR and SERP when example.com makes more sense?
I am not seeking advice on SEO skills, just a simple answer. But this leads to a second question - is PR overrated?
Marshall
[edited by: tedster at 2:46 am (utc) on July 27, 2008]
IMO, PageRank is still an important offpage component of the Google algorithm. To oversimplify greatly, there are many offpage factors, and many overlays to PageRank... let's call them trust and relevance factors... which don't show up in the Toolbar. So, even if the competing pages look similar, Toolbar PR is not a sufficient indication of the different offpage considerations that might cause one page to rank above the other.
The particularities of inbound links in relation to a particular page and the query also affect ranking. What might be a great link for one page and one query might not be great for another. It would take a lot of analysis beyond looking at the Toolbar to scope out a page's offsite strengths and weaknesses, and how they relate to the page for a given query.
Keep in mind the PageRank by itself is query neutral.
Also keep in mind that Toolbar PageRank, which is what you see, is always out of date and is a rough display only (jumping in steps of 1-10) of actual computed PageRank.
Regarding PageRank and what it is and what it isn't... in the Hot Topics Area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page, you will see this link: Google PR - Page Rank FAQs [webmasterworld.com]. It's a good place to start.
There's also a new thread about the recent changes in PageRank that you might take a look at....
So Google Changed their PageRank Algo - How?
[webmasterworld.com...]
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:39 am (utc) on July 27, 2008]
but on page 6 in the last place is example.com with a PR of 7
Could that be a penalty of some kind? While there are many query-dependent factors in addition to the query-neutral PR, it's pretty rare to find a PR7 on page six if the content is also relevant to the search terms.
Could that be a penalty of some kind?
To be blunt, and I don't think this violates the TOS, my test search parameter was < sorry, no sepcific keywords >. The results I posted where what I saw. I looked at both sites and, on the surface, saw no difference. The content was relevant and I didn't see any hidden code black hat tricks. If there was some form of penalty, it is beyond human perception.
Marshall
[edited by: tedster at 3:16 am (utc) on July 27, 2008]
The one you mentioned (before I edited it out) is one of those areas.
a, I suspect that the pR2 is obtained from more relevant links then the links to the pr7 site. Considering how many links you need to get to PR7 , perhaps it stands to reason that only a minute potion of that link power is relevant to the search
b, a cctld will probably outrank a .com everyday where PR on cctld is at least pr2 in some of the niches I look at(except google.com)
Just guessing , I am no expert, but these are some of the things i've seen, at least I think I have :)
