The Truth About Page Rank?

I didn’t write this but it is worth passing.

No hype, no bullshit, just a very well written report on the findings of a study they did on Page Rank.

I was actually floored because for ONE, I don’t ever see other people testing things and if they do, they tend not to share the results, and TWO, that I agree with everything they reported and have been spounting it for years.

I even yelled at the audiance when I spoke at Yaniks Underground that the biggest myth in seo was that “Content was King” cause it ain’t! And of course everyone looked at me like I had 5 heads. lol

Well, without getting into all the details of the report, which I hope you download and read, here are the bullets to the myth breaking findings.

  • Google doesn’t care about the “freshness” of your content.
  • Google doesn’t care about the “quality” of your content.
  • Google doesn’t care if you change the contents of a page
  • Google doesn’t care about duplicate content
  • Google doesn’t care if you change registrars or owners of a domain
  • Google doesn’t care if you change hosting providers and / or servers

What does Google care about, and what is KING in the SEO world is… links, and ONLY links.

Now with that being said. I want you to note that this report is on Page Rank, and not SE rankings. For ranking, I do believe in the “freshness” of LINKs and lot’s of them. 🙂

Click the report to download and read. It is short and to the point. Let me know what you think. And thanks to Internet Marketing Blueprint for the report, you just made a new fan! 🙂

What do you think, leave a comment below! 🙂

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31 thoughts on “The Truth About Page Rank?”

  1. While the report stating that “Links are all that matters” may have been true back in 2009, the recent “Caffeine” update to Google’s ranking algorithms has changed the picture dramatically. Google now pays a great deal more attention to both CONTENT and ACTIVITY (traffic and updates to the site) along with LINKS. These make up the “Holy Triad” for ranking your site now!

    Hint: don’t try a link-building campaign until you’ve got some decent content on your site – it looks un-natural to both humans and G to see a lot of links going to a page with paltry content!

    Cheers,
    David G.

  2. Dori,

    Thanks so much for posting.

    I thing its always been about links so I don’t think there is anything new here. I think you need to start with decent content first. If you have good content then you’ll get more links.

    I think the magic happens when you get good quality links with the right anchor text matching what’s on the linking page.

  3. I guess that I 100% agree with the pdf.

    The pdf addresses PageRank and I can’t much fault it.

    However, if I optimize my page internally and have the keyword in my domain and its a PR2, it can compete against PR4 and PR5 sites easily. It’s competitiveness is really a stretch against PR6 sites in the same genre but certainly other optimzied PR3 to PR5 sites are well within possible reach.

    In this example, my PR2 (bestdiamondjewellery.com) competes favorably against PR3 and PR4’s for not only “diamond jewellery” but about 200 other phrases.

    http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&q=diamond+jewellery&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=1

    Last year in the uk, it was swapping serp positions with competitive PR4 and PR5’s that were optimized by seo teams.

    It had an active blog, at that time, and people were really having rabid discussions on it.

    David, do u have access to recent stats produced after the Caffeine update?

  4. Very interesting. I was beginning to think the same thing.

    I will be doing some testing on this theory over the rest of the year and will drop you a line if I learn anything new.

    Thanks Dori!

  5. Hey Dori,

    What about the new Google Caffeine update? It’s been said that that emphasizes social activity on a site as well as links.

    What do you think?

    Steve

  6. While I agree that inbound links is the #1 ranking factor, I think the report is slightly outdated. Google has updated its algorithm several times since that report was published.

    Content, especially duplicate content, IMO, plays a huge role in how you rank in the SERPS.

    But overall, I think the report does correctly identify “links” as the major determiining factor in search engine rankings… Thanks!

  8. Does Google count links differently from the rest of the world?
    For example, there is a link from this page to my site. I have links from dozens of blogs and other authority sites to my site. But when I ask for a link count, it comes up as 0.
    So how does Google count a link?
    Thank you.
    Rick Carter
    STRESS JUDO
    Turning stress inTO OPPORTUNITIES
    http://stressjudo.blinkweb.com/overview.html

  12. The Perpetual Traffic Formula by Deis actually has this formula… I don’t want to copy/paste too much of his work but this is essentially what the seo world is coming to grips with …

    The Ranking Triad
    At the start of this report I mentioned that the core of Google’s algorithm is made up of three primary variables
    . They are:
    1. Content (keywords, domain name, tags, etc.)
    2. Links (inbound, outbound, authority, etc.)
    3. Activity (traffic, RSS subscriptions, comments, updates, etc.)
    I realize that most “SEO purists” reading this report will shun my Triad concept and call it “overly-simplistic”, but I would challenge them to come up with a known Google algorithm variable that DOES NOT fall into one of these three core variables…

  13. Hi Dori,

    I totally agree with what you are saying but I have one question for you.

    I’ve been going crazy building backlinks and been getting good results in the rankings. Yesterday I tested a 301 redirect, linking directly to the affilate offer site. To my dismay I, this morning I can’t find my site anywhere.

    Is this a temporary situation or did I lose all my positioning because of the 301 redirect. I have been building a solid backlinking strategy for the last 60 days and would hate to lose it all just like that.

    What can I do?

  14. That is the worst article I have seen in my decade+ of doing SEO.

    Page Rank is one of over 200 factors that Google uses to compute the rank of web pages in their index.

    Without “weight” attributes, PR should account for one half of one percent of the ranking factors (1/200)

    Let’s look at the study’s “findings”.

    >Search Engine Rankings – All other things being equal (over simplification
    ahead!), the higher the page rank the higher the search engine rankings will be for a particular page. Obviously, this means more traffic!

    Perhaps, but this is not measurable in the results.
    A low PR page can outperform a high PR page.

    >>Pay Per Click advertising – Although Google will deny this, our studies have
    shown that the higher the page rank, the lower your costs will be for adwords pay per click advertising.

    I do not know about that.
    I will have to pose this as a question to my Focus groups.

    >>>“Link Juice” – This is perhaps the most important. The higher the page rank
    of a page that you own and control, the more “link juice” you can pass on to
    your other sites. We all know that search engine rankings are mostly
    influenced by links. The more links you have, the higher you’ll rank (a bit of
    an oversimplification again, but generally true). In addition, the “quality” of
    the links plays a major part. The higher the page rank of the linking page, the
    higher the quality of the link. So that, for example, one link from a Page Rank
    4 page could be worth 500 links from a Page Rank 1 site.

    “Link Juice” is passed on according to a formula.
    Basically it is 85% of the PR of the page that the link is on divided by the number of outgoing links on the page. (I have a better explanation on “The logic of submitting or not submitting to Google.” http://dotcom-productions.com/08/article_info.php?articles_id=32 )

    You can get more PR from a PR1 site than you can get from a PR8 if the PR1 site has less outgoing links on a page.

    Google has made a point of telling webmasters NOT to consider PR. They have even removed the PR tool from their webmaster tool set.
    They also make a point to not tell you how many and which sites link to you in a “link:domain-name.com” check.

    The authors of the study say;
    “In drawing our conclusions, we saw that 80?90% of the domains followed the pattern, not 100%.”

    This is completely idiotic nonsense.
    SEO is a system. It follows the same steps for your site and my site and every site it indexes.

    What they think applies to the sites they checked would apply to 100% of the sites on the web.

    >>>>Google doesn’t care about the “freshness” of your content – Updating the content every day, once a week, once a month, or not at all had NO impact on Page Rank.

    This really shows they do not understand Page Rank.
    Page Rank is generated from the amount and PR of pages linking to you.
    It is not directly tied into content.
    Your content is the thing that the other sites linking to you use as a yardstick when considering your link.
    The fresher the content, the more detailed (relevant) the content, the more likely the other sites will be in linking to you.

    >>>>>Google doesn’t care about the “quality” of your content – The content amount, and quality of the content has no impact on Page Rank.

    See the above.. the same thing applies.

    >>>>>>Google doesn’t care if you change the contents of a page – For example,
    let’s say we have a page with a PR of 3.

    Again the same thing. The contents do not directly affect PR, it is the linking sites which determine PR.

    Same for “Google doesn’t care about duplicate content ?”

    >>>>>>>Google doesn’t care if you change registrars and or owners of a domain and Google doesn’t care if you change hosting providers and/or servers –
    They say “PR dropped and was then regained just as it was when the content was completely changed”

    If properly done, these changes are COMPLETELY transparent and will not affect PR.

    Their last statement saying “What does Google care about then? Simple…links and ONLY links” and “Absolutely the only thing that had an impact on page rank in our study for the
    majority of domains was back links.” is only a partial truth as it ONLY applies to Page Rank and not to the way pages rank in the search results.

    The FIRST statement “Search Engine Rankings – All other things being equal (over simplification
    ahead!), the higher the page rank the higher the search engine rankings will be for a particular page.”
    is a total fabrication.

    Search Rankings are most affected by on page presentation.

    I have a website with over 5000 links to it
    I can change its SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions) by changing a couple of words.

    If this study was correct, I would not be able to do this.

    Reg
    http://www.NBS-SEO.com
    http://www.DotCom-Productions.com

  15. I think a lot of people will incorrectly assume this report means that fresh content, quality content, duplicate content, etc aren’t important AT ALL.

    When in actuality, all it’s saying is that for PAGE RANK, they are meaningless. Not sure why a study was needed for this as the Page Rank formula is publicly available and everyone knows the only variables it looks at are backlinks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

    Quality, unique, and fresh content is without-a-doubt useful for search engine rankings, which is the most important thing.

    Me thinks the authors of this “study” wasted a full year and 2 full-time employees on nothing 😉

  16. I think I have to agree with some of the other commenters that google looks at a combination of things: content, links, and activity. When google changes its algorithm, it’s usually in response to problems caused by spammers, like link farms, etc.
    It makes sense google would look for a combination of supports to your website; it makes it harder for anyone to monopolize on any one characteristic of a good site. It needs to be a balance of all three: content, links and activity.
    Lots of great links don’t guarantee a good user experience for the web surfer, which is google’s goal. The site with lots of great links needs to have great content, or the web surfer will click away. The activity is amount of time spent on the site, and strength of social network support.
    Well, that’s my thoughts.
    http://onlinemarketingplanner.net/

  17. Ryan Deiss’s report provides a good overview of current Google algorithm. Whether we are talking about page rank or SE rankings, links are still critical in any SEO campaign.

  18. Hey Dori, miss you!
    Reg from NBS-SEO,
    I think the BS in your company name might be telling.
    Look, if someone wants to pay you to do SEO or to optimize their page, then why not? But
    a much better investment is in Dori’s SEONitro.
    She has proven over time that when it comes to search engine rankings that her network can provide enough link juice to catapult almost any page to the top. Crappy content, check. Duplicate content, check. Old content, check. Hey, that’s no way to get links from others, I agree, but with SEO Nitro, you don’t need the links from others. They can’t hurt and its always better to actually provide quality content to your readers, but you don’t need it to rank high. All you need is quality links with the proper anchor text from sites with decent page rank, all of which you get with SEO Nitro. NO BS. Just facts.

  19. I am interested in how content, links and activity
    can imporve my ranking in the SERPS for my offline (service) business. I believe G Caffeine is a step in the right direction but there will always be black hatters out there botting etc.

  20. I am interested in how content, links and activity
    can imporve my ranking in the SERPS for my offline (service) business. I believe G Caffeine is a step in the right direction but there will always be black hatters out there botting etc.

    http:/aquaproservices.com.au

  22. I have made an observation I would like your opinion on.

    My Carpet Cleaning Las Vegas Ranks number 2 on Yahoo, but on page 11 on google.

    I have noticed that I have many, many more links recognized by Yahoo than Google.

    Should I start looking for links recognized by Google and utilize them for better Google ranking?

    Thanks,
    Jay

  23. @DavidG Ahh you just read Ryan Diess new report lol, I need to test that puppy before I buy it hook line and sinker! 😉

    @Bill, good content is link bait, so yes good,

    @Trevor,yes it is all about PR, and PR is not the only ranking factor, ie as your example, just because a site has more PR, does not mean it will out rank.

    @Geoey, yes, test, test, send me your results and I will publish!

    @Steve, we will see lol

    @Columbus, I am not such a believer in duplicate content being critical unless it is a total duplicate site! Now there you are in trouble!

    @Marketing Forums, Yep, just read it today. I agree with everything Ryan has said pretty much, in fact I published a video on the click rate thing over two years ago called SEO vs. PPC

    http://www.dorifriend.com/videos/SEO2/SEO2.html

    so that is nothing new but is a great argument to get people looking at SEO 😉

    However, I have not tested the activity thing so I am still on the fence with that.

    I had always considered site size and additions made to site “site activity” and believe that is still a factor, and it does make sense that visitor activity would be taken into account, but is Google really that smart yet???

    And, I am still doing well with my focus on LINKING!

    @Rick, what Marketing Forums said 🙂

    @Motercycle, needs to be tested

    @Trevor, Ryan is a BRILLANT marketer with the brains of Perry Belcher behind him that makes them incredibly powerful mind shifters! lol, How much you want to bet, they got a program on to sell on that new third piece “activity!” 😉

    @Rudy, the 301 redirect alone should NOT of over optimized you, but all of your linking may have as I see a TON of that happening. What I do is start linking to my site using the URL as anchor text and that usually brings it back. 🙂

    @Reg, hmmm we are talking Page Rank, not Rankings.

    @Kane, correct, only about PR.

    @Peggy, I agree, but still need to test it.

    @Sittercity, Oh that Ryan Diess again! lol

    @Joshua, Thanks!!! 🙂

    @Mark, If you are a local service, your best bet is to get into Google Maps!!!

    @Jay, you will always have more links recognized by Yahoo then Google, but don’t stress about getting links “recognized” by Google, they recognize them if the site is in the index (and actually even when it isn’t lol) but they won’t tell you. Like mark, since you are local, your BEST bet is to get in Google Maps!

  24. I posted here yesterday after reading Ryans Triad body of work.

    I can validate that back in 2005, google adword campaigns could boost PR to as much as 3 on the dynamic inner pages of a diamond site if the ad spend and ensuing traffic was high enough. However, I have no recent tests to that effect.

    However, after watching the CherryPicker video from Ryan this morning, I was sorely disappointed.

    I think i won’t spoil it for most of you but since you are all into seo in a big way, go look at how Ryan talks to the newbies who don’t know any better.

    Look at the estimates being given for typical traffic in the first serp – 40% or more?

    Yeah, it can happen, but not typically, and this goes pretty far against even what Google has publicly stated in the past.

    Look closely at some of the cherry picked keyword related sites that he says one might be able to move downwards with ease. Some of them are PR5 sites with the significant domain trust of tens of thousands of links, sometimes over 40,000.

    After listening to his high speed speech and watching him gloss over and give inaccurate information to newbies now I wonder about that pdf document and his new activity theory.

    Truth and Integrity in advertising!

    What happened to it?

  25. Dori and all,

    I can agree with most of what you’re saying, but you need CONTENT, LINKS, and TRAFFIC to rank a site well, and CONTENT is still number 1 in ranking your site for a particular keyword from what I’ve seen. I think Ryan Deiss’ “Holy Triad” is almost right – but he mingles updates in site content with inbound traffic in his “Activity” sector – two very different things to me!

    Here’s an example where good content with few links and not a lot of traffic can still get your page ranked well: my “regular” business has evolved over the years into several different areas, and while website development and support for small businesses has become its primary focus, I’ve also worked in some niche areas involving security and encryption in IT products (especially networked devices).

    If you do a Google search for ‘fips consultant’ or ‘common criteria consultant’, my page on Common Criteria Certification and FIPS 140-2 Validation comes up at or near the top of the rankings! It’s #1 for ‘fips consultant’ (out of 774K results), #2 for ‘fips 140-2 consultant,’ and holds #3 and #4 positions for ‘common criteria consultant.’ It has a PR of 2 and my domain has been active since 2005 – which doesn’t hurt, but is not playing a major role as I out-rank several large companies with higher PRs and older domains.

    Why the high rankings? Google Webmaster Tools shows that I have NO inbound links to that page at all. (At one time I had 3, including one from a .EDU site, which DID help.) I do have over 1300 inbound links to my home page, but those are mostly from footer links that I put on the pages of my client websites (“Website produced by NetGreen Consulting, Inc.”) – not exactly what you’d call “quality” links. And for the past month, Analytics shows that my site has received 1600 “impressions” and just 22 clicks!

    BUT – I have consciously gone back to my site every couple of weeks and changed a few words on the Home page and that FIPS/Common Criteria page so that it differs slightly from the previous version of the page. From my perspective, it’s been the focused CONTENT and updates to the page (part of Ryan’s “Activity” sector), not the links or traffic, that puts this page at the top of the SERPs for those keywords (albeit a small niche).

    David G.

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  27. @David, your page has 20 links coming into it from your internal pages. And I’m not saying that on page factors can’t rank sites in very long tail keywords. Good grief, if you put quotations your term “fips consultant”… I COME UP FIRST!!! =:0

    @Trevor, I haven’t watched the entire video so can’t comment. But am hoping there is some value for newbies, guess I need to go watch. I like Ryan a lot so am routing for him! But I have to test the activity thing.

    @Affiliate, thanks! 🙂

  28. Dori, the fact that you come up first (actually 2nd today) for a Google search for “fips consultant” indicates to me that CONTENT is quite important along with your Page Rank – you surely don’t have any links to your site using “fips consultant” as anchor text!

    So you’re welcome for my 2 comments getting you to rank highly for a keyword that you’d never otherwise have!

    David G.

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