It is true, the last confirmed update happened on April 2, don’t believe me, here is the site that we all parade to to get the answer. http://googlepagerankupdate.com/
So what does this mean? And, have YOU seen any PageRank changes lately?
I know I have have PR5s, 6s and 7s pointing to this site and it hasn’t budged in PageRank! It continues to lament at a boring PR2. lol I know that I don’t do much linking to SeoNitro.com and it has gone from a PR1 to PR0 in the last 30 days. And, I know the only other reports coming into me have been about PR decreases.
So.. does this mean since there has been no major PageRank update, all my heavy PageRank sites linking to this site or other sites in question have no PageRank at all (or little)? Maybe, but we don’t know it because it hasn’t been updated. =:0
(and yes, I know the tool bar is incredibly out of date and inaccurate so you don’t have to tell me. lol, And, if you know of a reliable source of PageRank data, I would love to know it! 🙂
Or does it mean that Google is slowly dismantling PageRank?
I know I still keep on buying sites at auction that have PageRank because it is PageRank my customers like to see as it still retains that “perceived value.”
But really, what is the value of these sites today since the PageRank was assigned almost 8 months ago?
I don’t have the answer but am thinking unless Google gives us a bone, our industry must turn to other measuring sources.
What do you think?
I think its too early to sound the death knell yet. I recently conducted a simple experiment looking at two identical sites one was linked to by 10 high page rank sites, the other by ten sites with little to no PR.
The site with high incoming PR links was indexed much faster and rose in the search engines must quicker.
An experiment that can be critiqued for sure and by no means perfect, it did seem to indicate PR is not yet dead.
Page Rank has been driving me crazy on my primary blog. I have great traffic and I rank first page for about 20 different terms. My blog has been online since 2007 yet…. I have a PR0!
This makes no sense to me. With over 6000 links and a handful of PR5, PR6, and PR7 links there really is no reason why my PR would still be zero.
If the trend is that PR does not matter much any more that would be a relief to me. To tell you the truth because of my struggles with my primary blog I’ve actually begun to ignore PR on my site. That doesn’t mean I ignore it when doing my link building.
It’s something I’d love to learn more about.
Considering the current wave of competition that Google has been facing, I strongly believe that PageRank is the least of their priorities.
Did you notice their homepage changes? Their SERPs looking more like that of Bing? Check their SERPs for images and you will discover that it just like the way Bing used to display their results. What about the search results themselves? The peek view of the results?
We have not even mentioned the ever growing user base of FaceBook, 500 million at the last official count.
There is a strong threat to Google’s dominance that was not there a year ago, and they realise it’s not going to go away.
So, PR is not their priority at the moment, but I don’t think the technology will be discarded either.
I don’t know whether it is on the decline, but the fact remains that it is not really that important – at least for ranking purposes.
Trust rank is what matters much more. Getting links from trusted websites and that delicious trust-juice is what makes your rankings climb.
It’s great to have PR, but it’s only value is in the ego boost it gives.
I have sites with low PR that rank well, and a PR5 that doesn’t rank for anything!
I think the only reason to try and develop page rank is if you want to sell a website to someone who doesn’t know any better!
I have had a website that has been a PR 3 since I learned what PR means… about 4-5 years ago. Consistantly on the first 2 pages of a particular search term. It dropped to 0 within a couple of months. Something is definately up! Strangely, I am still on the first page of the same search with other PR 3’s 4’s and 5’s.
@EchO, cool experiment! and looks like the sites that appeared to have pr, still did! 😉 I’m not giving up on it yet, but we need a new measurable barometer! 🙂
@Roger, I hear yeah, same with a TON of my sites!
@BrotherJohn, good perspective!
@Legal, PR is what use to be the measurable barometer of trusted sites. What do you use now? How do you know a site is trusted or not? And I agree, just PR isn’t going to rank you, never did, but it did say something about the authority and trust worthiness, no?
@Steve, I have noticed the same thing, lose of PR but not of rankings! 🙂
I have been following the effects of PR on my new nbs-seo website and the PR was adjusted on June 25th.
However, I think PR is being adjusted on an individual basis since the Caffeine update. None of my sites or my client’s and associates’ sites were affected.
Last year Google removed the PageRank tool from it’s webmaster tools and told us all to concentrate on other aspects of SEO.
However, it did leave the browser bar PR tool.
Right from the beginning, PageRank has not performed to Google’s expectations.
With PR influencing SERPs, too many were scheming to use artificially placed links to boost search positions.
Over the course of the years, Google has been constantly tweaking the algo to combat ever increasing linking schemes.
However, PR is Larry Page’s baby and is not going to be abandoned on the steps of the orphanage.
The problems with PR are all based on relevance, or lack of it.
The old method of calculation, before Mayday, is based on the linked page getting a percentage of the linking page’s PR x .85 / the amount of outbound links on the page.
While this worked, it did not take into account the relevance between linking and linked.
A non relevant link on a PR8 site received more “link juice” than a link on a PR1 site, all things being equal.
Google trashed this with the Mayday update.
They did not go into details but they confirmed this when they said that the update dealt with ranking, not crawling or indexing.
Now PR “link juice” is being calculated based on the relevance between linking and linked pages.
My NBS site went from PR0 to PR4 in one step
At the time of the change, I had 115 links.
1 on a PR5, 1 on a PR3, and 113 on PR0 pages.
This is quite a departure from the old system as I have 576 links on a PR3, and over 5000 on another PR4.
All the nbs links were on highly relevant posts like this one.
With the depreciation of PR last year and the mayday update, PR has so little effect on indexing (SERPS) as to be undetectable.
However, PR is still an indication of authority and Google uses it to determine how often the site should be crawled.
The higher your PR, the more often the Google bot visits, the fresher your indexed content.
Best,
Reg
nbs-seo.com
@Reg, wow, great post! So you saw a PR increase on June 25th. Very interesting! hmm
Buying sites looking at PR is like buying a car looking at the speedmeter: if that’s how they want it, then that’s what you give them Dori 🙂
Google is still Google: links are important but they added quality in a few years ago. So if you link from your own PR7 site about lets say greenhouses to a new site about lets say coffee, you won’t get the good old full PR7 push.
Unless you need PR to make an extra profit, don’t bother about looking at your “speedmeter” 🙂
I have no idea one way or the other.
I am still trying to figure out how any of the search engine algorithms work in the first place.
I just struggle along trying my best to create content and hope for the best at this time.
I am also a PR2.
I have been wondering this myself. I do agree that the perceived value of Page Rank is still fairly high.
Out page rank has not went up or down for over a year not matter what I do….add links…add content…do more social networking. It is a mystery to me?
I forgot to mention….we are a PR4 and trying to get to a PR 5
What is page rank but a ball park indicator of how good the age, backlink profile, and other domain attributes? None of that has really changed too much, and if we are working on all those things for our rankings then we don’t need to worry about the PR. Besides, I have not really noticed that PR alone does much for SERP rankings and it seems people obsess about it.
Besides that I have noted many cases where sites were granted PR5 or above with zero or almost zero backlinks. These sites are usually non-profit organizations, and my opinion is that PR is granted to them manually by a real person. I’m not sure it has much weight in the algorithm, I mean it is the factors that give you PR (besides manually done) that give you weight in the algorithm, and none of that has changed…
One thing also gets importance in Googles PR system, Links should always come from Pages dealing about the same theme as your page. If your page is about Cruises or Travel in General you should try to get links related to travel.