"No effect on Google Search": Bots, DA & PA. per John Mueller & SER

[Robert Charlton]

A clear re-statement by Google's John Mueller to correct some common SEO misconceptions...

It's possible that I have said this before, but PA & DA have absolutely no effect on Google search. Zero effect.

[twitter.com...]

This via Twitter, and Barry Schwartz in his SER article today, along with Barry's further analysis....

Third-Party Bot Traffic Does Not Directly Impact Your Google Rankings
Apr 5, 2021 - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

These are such common misconceptions that I feel compelled to restate them emphatically here. Thanks Barry, thanks John.

[iamlost]

Roflmao...

SEOpeople are sheeple. I say again: SEOpeople are sheeple.
Note: not all of course. But mostly all.

Once upon a time TBPR (toolbar page rank) was a Google marketing feature (I say again marketing feature) that the SEO community took as a sales and leverage feature and built entire business models and empires on top of it.

Google eventually discontinued TBPR and Moz stepped up with ready replacement that the SEOsheeple grabbed onto with messianic fever in relief that their businesses could pivot in place and continue.

The myths, damned lies into received truth by virtue of sheer repetition, and wink wink correlation does not imply causation nudge nudge, that underpin (can you say castle built on sand) so much of SEO would be projectile vomit nausea inducing if it did not open such a competitive advantage chasm for nonsheeple webdevs.

Ah, while you can lead sheeple to the truth you cannot sheer their beliefs... nor silence their angst and wailings... double down forever doubling down.
Note: just read the monthly WebmasterWorld Google pity thread.
And remember:
Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.
—-Albert Einstein

Ah well, that laughing fit brightened the day I must say. Off to speak to government bureaucrats in a much better frame of mind :)

[dolcevita]

Intersting what he says 'not directly'. I read that nevertheless impacts Google ranking in an indirect way through a note in the algorithm.

EDIT:
Now I looked at twitter and he didn’t say ‘not directly’. My mistake in interpreting the article.

[FranticFish]

The single most important on-page metric to me (PA, TrustFlow, whatever you want to call it) - as far as Google is concerned - is Google index status.

If I cannot verify indexing (via inurl: as site: seems to be pretty much deprecated) then my assessment usually stops there, if my motivation is PageRank.

This does assume that public index status reflects Google's internal assessment, which may not be the case. But I figure that if Google doesn't consider a page important enough to show it to someone looking for it directly, then it's not going to consider a link from it important in any way either.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

This is BS; DA, PA, PR, BDSM, R the CORE of the SERP.

[not2easy]

Lol, Jorge, you forgot the /s..too many are likely to quote you there. ;)

[RedBar]

This is BS; DA, PA, PR, BDSM, R the CORE of the SERP.

I'd been wondering how to phrase it :-)

[dolcevita]

And what about this from Mar 25, 2021 :
[search-off-the-record.libsyn.com...]

Question on 10:28 'How has PR changed over the years?, Are we still using PR same way that we did it in beginning? Has it change or has it gonna away..."
To answer exactly question that you ask "WE ARE STILL USING IT THE SAME WAY".

As far as I understand in the indirect answer, it is the opposite of this answer from the topic - No effect on Google Search ": Bots, DA & PA. per John Mueller & SER

[not2easy]

PR is not PA.

[dolcevita]

not2easy - It doesn't matter to me. The essence is that Google invented PR and abolished it, but it still pays attention to it behind closed doors. Which means that in a certain segment, DA and PA, which are a simulation of PR, have an impact on SEO values and in that context on the SERP.

And after all, it makes me distrust everything that John, Gary or Martin say. One time it is not, and another time maybe, while the third time it can be very likely.

[topaz]

This argument is ridiculous, and I grind my teeth every time I see it. Of course, DA & PA has no bearing on Google.
But DA & PA is relevant because Google stopped showing PageRank publicly, although they still use links to rank webpages. How else are we to objectively measure the quality of a link or domain, at a glance, if not by third parties like Moz and ahrefs.

[iamlost]

How else are we to objectively measure the quality of a link or domain, at a glance, if not by third parties like Moz and ahrefs.

Very simply: does it refer converting traffic: yes? no?

Of course there are, in every niche/vertical, topic specific high value links that refer little to no traffic, however these are, relatively speaking, rare.

Similarly, one can measure each page of a site’s ‘search ranking’ by the quantity and quality of referred traffic. Yes, it’s a relative measure but it’s practical and a solid metric.

Log files, a webdev’s ‘secret’ weapon.

Those lists of linking domains/URLs from third parties can seem massively impressive until one realises that the emperor has no clothes - there is absolutely no indication of what value, if any, Google or any other platform, sees in them singly or en total. BBB.

Chasing phantoms in the mist.

[FranticFish]

How else are we to objectively measure the quality of a link or domain, at a glance

You're not - not at a glance.

I've seen toxic sites with high 50s high 60s mDA.
I've seen pages with mPA of 45 or more that are not even in the Google index.

Even if toolbar PageRank were around today I suspect it would not tell you much more than DA or PA. Towards the end it was not something to rely on in ANY way. There were people who bought domains, rented themselves one or two very high PR links, waited for their PR5 or PR6 to show in the toolbar, and then either sell the domain or sell a load of links on it. Having done that they then stopped renting their high PR links and the domain goes back to PR0.

[NickMNS]

How else are we to objectively measure the quality of a link or domain, at a glance, if not by third parties like Moz and ahrefs.

I'm amazed at how effective the marketing strategies of these companies (third parties) have been. How they have managed to convinced webmaster of the importance of such metrics. To the point where one often see people questions Google when these metric fail to provide the insight they promise. "Google is broken, my site doesn't rank but I have a DA/PA of 66698e2".

Google never stopped using PageRank in their ranking of websites, all they did is to stop publishing it. Why, because it was one of many factor and thus could be misleading and confusing.

The third parties stepped it in and produce their own metrics, but if PR was misleading and Google has perfect information, how could DA/PA/RA or any other external metric not be even more misleading. But when your business is all about selling snake oil, the only solution ramp up the marketing.

[Robert Charlton]

Which means that in a certain segment, DA and PA, which are a simulation of PR, have an impact on SEO values and in that context on the SERP.

They are definitely not a simulation of PageRank in its present form, whatever that may be.

Most important... DA and PA, it's been acknowledged, were a mixture of old style SEO folk wisdom, rumor, and opportunism... mixed in with correlation of factors that may not matter anymore, stirred with a golden spoon... and sold at a not inconsiderable price.

The numbers generally were correlated with optimization on sites that were trying to rank by artificial means. These days, what with machine learning factored into the real algorithms, too much correlation with those old tricks might in fact hurt you.

[dolcevita]

If I can remember PR, there was hype then who would have the bigger one, although it had almost no or at least insignificant impact on the SERP. And it was based on the number of links and PR from other sites.
As far as I understand, DA and PA are based in a similar way and I understand that they are a commercial product, but here I agree with topaz that they give us a good insight into the amount of links from other domains as well as their quality.

In my opinion, they are simulations of PR as much as i know about PR and as much as i know about DA or PA.

I also understand that google has evolved, became more artificially intelligent, but I don’t think we can still ignore the impact of PR i.e. DA and PA. At least they give us a first impression of the quantity and quality of links for a particular domain before we move deeper into the analysis with the IP, age, how often change owners, content, offline factors etc...

I may be thinking the old SEO way, but I am still convinced that of the thousands of SEO factors that play a role in determining position, as well as that a thousand negative spam links can shake positions, links from other domains play the most important role for SERP and in that context are DA and PA.

[lammert]

A strong back-link profile with a high DA/PA/PR may work against you. If Google's algorithms determine a high PR (with Google's own algorithm), but their other algorithms determine that the quality of the content doesn't justify so many back-links, they can use that as a signal that the back-link profile has been manipulated. Concluding that the goal of the webmaster is not to provide quality content but to manipulate the SERPs, and consequently rank the site lower than it would have purely based on the content alone.

In the past, all the signals for a site had to be strong. Now, all the signals for a site have to match with each other. That is a whole different game. I am sure manipulation is still possible, but not with only focusing on links. If you want to game the algorithm a holistic approach is needed. Or alternatively, follow their guidance and focus on the content and let the site gain traction naturally.

[dolcevita]

It’s an interesting theory lammers, but based on what signals does Google assess the quality of content? Based on bounce rate, exit rate,return of old visitors, new visitors, length of stay ...? On what basis do you think Google rates what reciprocates content of quality with link quality?

My experience tells me, not speculation, that links are still the most important thing. This is very easy to prove.

Take the top 10 positions in any industry and analyze those domains, the amount and quality of links, their bounce rate, exit rate, the amount of spam links and you will get a nice picture of what and how.

If you show me by any example that a certain domain has a top position without a bunch of quality links and only with quality content (whatever you mean with the quality of content), then I will give up my conviction.

[NickMNS]

@dolcavite
Nobody is suggesting that link aren't important. But Google chooses to ignore some links, they also choose to discount the value of others and conversely accord higher value to other links. But Google provides no information as to which links fall into any of these three categories and more importantly the category that the link falls into is likely different depending on the nature of the website receiving the link. Now we can speculate until the cows come home about how all this works, but we can't know, neither can companies such as Moz and aHrefs et al. The bottom line is the metrics produced by these companies are at best educated guesses, no better than what you or I could make.

Sure these companies wrap their speculations in fancy UI, dashboards and let you apply their metrics to your competitors, and on the surface it looks, and feels good too, but at the end of the day it is still just someone's educated guess. I personally would not base any business decisions on these metrics, and I certainly wouldn't pay to gain access to them.

[JS_Harris]

My advice: Use whatever system you want if it helps you to work on your content quality for VISITORS, the rest should be irrelevant.

[dolcevita]

Nobody is suggesting that link aren't important.

Whether we want to admit it or not the links are the MOST important. Of course, everything should be in harmony with the rest, but without the quality of the links, there is no SERP progress.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:57 pm (utc) on Apr 14, 2021]
[edit reason] Fixed formatting + forum Charter and ToS issues [/edit]

[JS_Harris]

I think everyone's missing the point John was making when he said PA and DA have no effect on Google. He was saying it simply doesn't influence Google's ranking systems.The discussion has jumped from that to the backlinks that drive PA and DA somehow but John never said backlinks have no effect. He never mentioned backlinks at all.

Use PA and DA to find pages that need improving and they might be useful. Use them to gauge the perceived value of a link from that page at your own risk