Examples of Google's Broken Page Rank

PR not justified even by a stretch.

[papabaer]

I was going through my email and culling some of the "saved" missives. I came across two responses from Google (Tuesday, March 11, 2003 9:38 PM) in reference to a suspicious PR9 site I happened across. The PR9 of site in question is awarded to the semi-splash-page intro for a web design firm. The content consists of three short text paragraphs and an unordered list of eight links. Several of the links lead to client sites. Two are for clothing/jeans companies. Both commercial sites have PR8 gimmes.

I wrote Google origianally to inquire if there was some inerrant anomaly that may have caused the extremely generous page rank awards. The replies from Google expressed gratitude and communicatd that these three sites would be investigated.

Reviewing my email before deletion, I noted the links and decided to dust off Internet Explorer and see "what was what" in regards to the suspect sites. I was both surprised and disappointed to see that all three still retained values of PR9, PR8 and PR8 respectively.

The PR9 site shows 168 backlinks, the majority of which are belong to the site's own photo album.

One of the PR8 sites consists of a Flash Intro page with only four (4!) backlinks. Cloaking anyone? Hmmmm....

PR9? PR8? Come on! I expect that level for major information sites and top portals. Not awarded to a web design firm with little actual content and a Jean company.

I understand and fully appreciate Google's continued quest to refine ranking algo's, but in truth, these three are beyond me.

[Chris_R]

If they have done webdesign for other PR9 sites - they could easily get a PR9 by having a link to their page from that page.

None of this is strange or abnormal.

It may seem unfair, but no one ever said PageRank is fair.

Very few seem to complain about sites like the new york times that link to a copy of match.com and come up number 2 for "personals".

There seems to be a double standard.

Yahoo is a RESPECTED site that charges $300 - $600 a year to be listed in their crappy directory.

Many of the news sites out their have very little original content - but they never get any flack.

If you have money - you can spam all day long and no one sees it as that.

[Dolemite]

If you have money - you can spam all day long and no one sees it as that.

So true, sadly.

[flex55]

One of the problems with PR is that once you get it, you can fool / spam it. I wish there were a better way, but hey, it's like democracy- has its pros and cons, but it's the best of the worst.