PR Gold Dust....

The invincible shield

[FleaPit]

I have seen it too many times, sites not really all that with the bare minimum optimization right up there occupying number one! I am totally convinced that PR is near enough the be all and end all of Google rankings. Most people who come to these forums know a fair bit about SEO, at least enough to make it all fairly rudimentary. After all, there are only so many things you can do with an H1 tag or keyword density, anchor text etc What it comes down to is that elusive little unicorn, the gem amongst gems, a full monty link that graces your site with an omnipotent PR of 7 or 8. I can see it, there at the base of the rainbow, its right on the tip of my tongue, ooooh pavlovs dog, come to momma, yeah baby, yooooour mine......

[Mohamed_E]

FleaPit,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

For every post like yours claiming that PR is the be all and end all of Google there are two posts of the "Why does this PR 4 site beat my PR 6 site?".

The reality is simply as Brin and Page wrote in [www7.scu.edu.au...]

Combining all of this information into a rank is difficult. We designed our ranking function so that no particular factor can have too much influence.

[JudgeJeffries]

I dont believe it!
In my area the 5's outrank the 4's outrank the 3's etc.
Its a recurring theme with a few anomalies, but not many.
All other things being equal PR counts big time.

[BGumble]

My PR7 is getting trounced in the 1-word search by sites that have the keyword in their domain name because of incoming link text. Most of them are 4's 5's and 6's. You already have the URL Judge, try and find me for the keyword.

It will never be "one factor" that is everything.. those were the olden days.

[europeforvisitors]

Case study (four home pages)

For my most important two-word keyphrase:

Site A - PR6 - #1
Site B - PR7 - #6
Site C - PR7 - #13
Site D - PR7 - #25

When the two words in the keyphrase are reversed:

Site A - PR6 - #3
Site B - PR7 - #4
Site C - PR7 - #7
Site D - PR7 - #1

In the first case, the PR6 site is the clear winner over all three PR7 sites; in the second, the PR6 site is #2 out of four. Clearly, "on-page factors" trump PageRank at least some of the time.

[JudgeJeffries]

True,
But theres no 3's 4's or 5's up there.
PR is a heavy determinant of position.

[BGumble]

But PR is also created by incoming links.. so you can't say whether they are there because of generic high PR or because they have a lot of relevant, keyworded incoming links, and as a side-effect, also have a high PR. Both are important.

[jimbeetle]

Clearly, "on-page factors" trump PageRank at least some of the time.

Or maybe that also important link text or other off-page factors that we aren't aware of (are there others?).

It will never be "one factor" that is everything.

And trying to separate them out as BGumble and europe forvisitors show is next to impossible. There are always the anomalies (Nothing on the page and it ranks number 1) that usually show the importance of PR and link text, but also show the not quite up to snuff pages below them in the rankings (or the non-competitiveness of the keywords).

There are a couple of non-anomalous situations where I can't figure out why a page is so high ranked for competitive keywords in my field. Some PR, some backlinks (some with keywords in the link text), a couple of keywords here or there on the page -- and right up there with the big boys with no cloaking that I can see. That's the code I want to break!

[ciml]

If you run a test on URLs with a variety of different PageRank levels and fixed on-page factors, then you'll see that PageRank is crucial.

If you run a test on URLs with a variety of different on page factors and fixed PageRank, then you'll see that on page factors are crucial.

For highly competitive, short phrases (like "download", "http" or "com"), you'll generally find that PageRank is very important.

For more specific, longer phrases (like "fuzzy blue widget in MyTown"), you'll generally find that on page factors are more important.

<added>
and as jimbeetle points out, link text is very important too

[edited by: ciml at 6:57 pm (utc) on April 16, 2003]

[FleaPit]

When I say PR is the golden chalice I mean it as the final piece of the jigsaw. We can all optimize sites so-so but what lifts you onto the podium is high PR. A site that has a PR 7 or 8 needs little optimization to get a top 10, if it is optimimzed then it is pretty much invincible. So, that said if we all optimize and get that one high PR link then thats it K'CHING you can laugh it up all the way to the bank if thats what your site does.

[ciml]

I would have agreed with your last comment in the past, FleaPit, but Google now responds well to URLs with many links from other domains, rather than one high PR link.

[rfgdxm1]

>My PR7 is getting trounced in the 1-word search by sites that have the keyword in their domain name because of incoming link text. Most of them are 4's 5's and 6's. You already have the URL Judge, try and find me for the keyword.

I'm familiar with BGumble's site. A classic example of a site in the form of brand.com doing poorly, because this results in people linking to the site with with "brand" rather than the desirable "keyword". If PR was that much of a factor in the SERPs, BGumble's site with an impressive PR7 should be at least at the bottom of the top 10. Because he has the wrong incoming link text, he is buried so far down the SERPs nobody will find it on that search.

[FleaPit]

I do not dispute that. Like I said before, PR is the final piece of the puzzle and the most crucial. Do all the other SEO stuff after all that's the easy bit, but when you get that high PR link, and only then, you can rule the roost and poor scorn on your peers.