Page Rank, is it still KING?

allintext ranking has been more of a factor...

[junai3]

Since Google's last algo change, I've noticed that Page Rank has not been playing as large a factor in my rankings.

Is anyone else seeing this? Could this be because Google's Page Rank tool is broken and that things will return to how it was when everything is fixed?

[Marcia]

I really think it depends on how competitive the area, because different factors come into play in a different proportion. In low to medium a PR4 that's specific seems to be able to beat a PR6 that's less specific or not as well optimized, but once it gets into highly competitive big $$ searches pretty much all of the sites are ultra-optimized, which is when it sure looks like it's links and PR that'll carry it.

Some can be found by checking out what search terms apply to the unsolicited email that we get daily, doing a search and checking backlinks - if the pages we're seeing in the SERPs are actually the ones with the links to them. It's hard to find anything that isn't optimized.

imho that's why we can see so much PR for sale out there and apparently no lack of takers on the lookout to buy in some industries.

[Iguana]

I have never seen a PR7 site beaten by a lower PR site

-pages have PR not sites. The question is how many PR7 pages with the search term in their title have you seen beaten by a lower PR page

It's simple to test how important PR is - it just takes time to get the results from Google

1 Create a page about 'red widgets' and link to it from your main page.

2 Create a page about 'blue widgets' that is only linked to from your red widgets page

3 the blue widgets page should be PR-1 compared to the red widgets page.

4 Make changes to the pages and see if you can get the blue widgets page to come above the red widgets page in a search for 'widgets'.

I've found that if both pages have 'widget' in the title then I can't do it - but I've only tried on-page factors (not external link text)

[echo1573]

i think so,i found some lower pr sites rank well in google.

[Namaste]

I have a few pages being beaten by lower PR: Blue Widgets Online
They have 4 things going for them:
1, Very high keyword density
2, Keywords are in a string: Blue Widgets online, while mine are Blue Widgets buy online
3, They are featuring the keyword widgets in twice in their URL
4, The page that is giving them a link has very few outbound links on it and is a PR6.

PR is no longer King, it is a PRINCE, with other princes with whom it has to compete

[Powdork]

Namaste,
Im guessing in your case #2 is the most important factor with #4 probably second.

[Friday]

"...it makes sense to make it look like it is broke and then wait for everyone to slowly come off of their PageRank Jones"

LOL!
Great choice of words.
But seriously, I believe PR is still VERY important at Google.
I just took on a new client whose PR SUX!
And from the response so far, it looks like I really have my work cut out for me (Very competiive field too).

We're doing great everywhere else, but not at Google.
:(
And Google and I have always gotten along famously!

[Arnett]

PageRank is not as important as it has been in the past couple of years but it is still a factor in determining SERP position. Since updates "Dominic" and "Esmerelda" several members have been moaning loudly about Google's backlinks being months out of date. GoogleGuy insists that the backlinks are back in the index.

The way that I see it the important questions to ask are 1) Are the backlinks current? and 2) Is PR being calculated or updated at all? Before the aformentioned updates PageRank was updated during the "monthly" dance. Now Google is working with a "rolling update" that they say will update the index every three weeks.

Test the system yourself. Go to Google and search for "link:domain.ext" without quotes and using your domain name. Google has never shown all pages with links in the backlinks results. They have generally shown only those pages with links to domain.ext that have a PageRank of 4 or higher. If you have the IE Google toolbar installed start checking the urls in the backlinks results. You'll be SHOCKED at the mess that you find. Many of those pages will show a PR of less than 4 and many will show a PR of 0. How's that for current or accurate? How can it possibly be ANY measure of ANY pages' "importance" with Google's ranking scheme. YES,PageRank is broken.

On another note,pages with PageRank of 4 or higher were previously updated monthly while those with a PageRank of less than 4 were only updated every three months. Now that Google is claiming to update their entire index every three weeks with their new,snazzy "rolling update" start watching to see when your pages are updated in the index. I put a SSI date call in the footer of pages that I want to watch. Google will cache the page when it crawls and the date will show in the footer when the index (and presumably backlinks/PageRank) is updated. The last indication of an "update" in these "watched" pages shows mid-June in some cases and July dates in others but there has been NO change in PageRank even though I have added over 1000 static pages to my site. If these pages have a PageRank of 4 or less I'm guessing that the next update of these pages will be in September or October. In a worse case PageRank and backlinks may not be getting updated at all.

Watch for changes in your cached pages if you want to see updates. Watch the PageRank of the urls in your backlinks search results to see if and when any changes occur.

[europeforvisitors]

I have never seen a PR7 site beaten by a lower PR site

I know a site on my same exact topic (in fact, I used to run it) that has PR7 compared to my current site's PR6. In most months (including this one), my current site ranks higher than the PR7 site for every important keyword and keyphrase that I monitor.

A PR7 site should trump a PR6 site when all other things are equal. But with more than 100 factors going into the Google algorithm, it isn't very common for all other things to be equal.

[Powdork]

How can it possibly be ANY measure of ANY pages' "importance" with Google's ranking scheme. YES,PageRank is broken.

No, just a bit less accessible. The sites that you are describing are in most cases behaving (ranking) as they would if they had the pr that would come from their actual current backlinks. I wouldn't be surprised if Google came out and said the toolbar pr queries were slowing their servers down so it would be removed from the toolbar, or only available with the API, or perhaps only by request similar to the rest of page info (directory cats, cache, backward links). I think pageoneresults mentioned this first.

[Arnett]

"The sites that you are describing are in most cases behaving (ranking) as they would if they had the pr that would come from their actual current backlinks."

Thanks for clearing that up. How do you get quoted text from previous posts into your reply?

[storevalley]

Thanks for clearing that up. How do you get quoted text from previous posts into your reply?

Instructions for this kind of stuff are here ...

[webmasterworld.com...]

Look for the Quote function.

[Powdork]

Here's an idea that can maybe weave this thread with one about dmoz. Suppose Google should eliminate the pr functionality from the toolbar so that the only way you could view pr is in the Google Directory. All pages would have pr just as now but you could only view pr when looking at the G directory listings. Then Google dumps dmoz, or dmoz starts charging, so the directory can be monetized. You don't need to be in the directory to have pr, just for people to see it. It would be like Publishers Clearing House where you don't have to buy a magazine to enter, but no one believes you can win unless you subscribe to one. If you can't see your pr, do you really have it? Webmasters would shell out serious dinars to get in the directory and it wouldn't affect Googles serp relevance in the slightest. Just an idea.:)

[trillianjedi]

SERPS are varying again across www2, www3, ex and cw.

It looks to me that www2, 3, ex and cw have more weight attributed to on page factors and keyword density.

I'm seeing a couple of hidden text spammers doing very well on these datacentres.

Google may not yet be filtering them of course, although these are blue text against a blue .gif background so I suspect still undetectable by google.

Page Rank is very much having less impact on these "new" datacentres (if that's what they are) and keyword domains are definitely getting a very heavy bias.

Anyone else seeing other things I've missed here?

TJ

[Arnett]

I wouldn't be surprised if Google came out and said the toolbar pr queries were slowing their servers down so it would be removed from the toolbar, or only available with the API, or perhaps only by request similar to the rest of page info (directory cats, cache, backward links)

Powdork, I emailed the toolbar people and asked them about that. Will post if I get a reply.

[GrinninGordon]

trillianjedi

"SERPS are varying again across www2, www3, ex and cw."

Is that a freight train I hear coming? ;-)

[Powdork]

-dc is currently misbehaving. Its showing different results and a dmoz update

[trillianjedi]

GrinninGordon,

Sorry, we ended up carrying on that conversation on another thread. Was only temporary, then stabilised. Looked to me like temporary removal of spam filters.

I think google are playing a lot at the moment.

TJ

[UK_Web_Guy]

Powdork

Would you say -dc is more up to date then?

A sign of things to come?

I too am seeing some differences

[Powdork]

I would definitely say it is more up to date. It does not mean it is the things to come. At times I am starting to think of the datacenters as ingredients of the things to come. At any time a different datacenter can be a piece of the whole algorithm or the whole algorithm with a piece missing. I think that is where the importance of diversifying lies. Not in different keywords, not in diferent anchor text, (although important) but in different pieces of the algo.

[Jakpot]

"and a dmoz update"

So this is where the junk (eBay, Amazon, Porn, etal) is coming from - to dominate the SERPs