PR3 site beats a PR6 site. Why? Options

here's one for you.

On Google search for "Dewalt 9.6V Drill"

The first link is for shop.store.yahoo (Go Figure!)

the second link is to a PR3 site.

Then - our site follows in 3rd place as a PR6 site. Any ideas why a PR3 site beats us out?

That's easy! That's because your PageRank number has very, very little to do with how you'll rank in the search engines. It's a very common misconception.

Jill

PageRank by itself doesn't determine rankings although it does play a significant part. Your page is PR5, incidentally, and not PR6.

I haven't even looked skin deep but the pages' titles are significantly different and greatly favour the higher placed pages on that particular search term - "Dewalt 9.6V Drill". The proximity of the search term words within the page and its elements is important. The first 2 words of the search term (Dewalt 9.6V) appear in the higher pages' Title tags and body text whereas your page doesn't have those word adjacent to each other anywhere.

You could modify your text to have at least several instances of that phrase and, more especially, modify your Title tag by placing the words together at the front.

Example:-
The first time that my PageRank article (link in my signature) was indexed, it went in at
In your case, the exact search term doesn't appear anywhere in your page. I've only looked at Google's serps so I'm judging that by the snippet that they show. Proximity matters.

Phil.

Phil - Thanks for the input. I feel strangely good after being hit between the eyes with a 2x4!

Thanks! :wink: I needed that!

I am working on the grunt work now of title changes, text changing, and various other things. I only have 27,000 items to work with. Shouldn't take too long! :shock:

That's easy!  That's because your PageRank number has very, very little to do with how you'll rank in the search engines.  It's a very common misconception.

What makes you think that Jill?

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages....

That's what Google is still saying about PageRank. PageRank is about ranking, and that's all that it is about. If it isn't used for ranking purposes, what is the heart of their software used for?

The misconception that you mentioned is true. PageRank isn't the biggest factor in determining the rankings. But it isn't as small a factor as some people now seem to be suggesting. It's a very significant factor. It won't allow an unoptimised page to beat a highly optimised one very easily, but it will allow a moderately optimised page to beat a highly optimised page that has less PR. PR matters much more than some people are making out these days.

Phil.

For the average site owner, who is optimizing for keyword phrases that are not highly competitive (which is what I recommend), a highly optimized page will have no problem being on top. A link from yahoo, dmoz, and a few other places should be enough links to do well.

Now, of course, having a high page rank AND a highly optimized page is killer!

Jill

I did some looking around. And - I notice that there are a few PR7 sites out there. I did not notice anything higher in the tool area. www.dewalt.com homepage has a PR7.

our home page is PR6 http://www.toolup.com

and our sub pages are PR5's.

Am I correct in Assuming that a PR6 is pretty decent?

PR6 is very decent. :Fade-color

Hey! How'd you get that cool rainbow smiley!! Darnit I want one!

My site is a PR6 because:?:

Is it because we are linked directly from the dewalt site to our site? the dewalt link page:
http://www.dewalt.com/us/retailers/
is a PR7 - and we are on that page - and often in the top 3.
Does that infer - by association a PR6?

But - that would also mean that Sleggtools (a PR3) breaks that thought... And I know quite a few others that are not PR6's.

So - how the heck did I get a PR6 when I am just learning about this darn PR stuff? :?

So - how the heck did I get a PR6 when I am just learning about this darn PR stuff?

That's the beauty of PageRank...you don't have to know anything about it...it just happens!

PageRank is based on all the various links to your site. Links from high PageRank sites can transfer over more of their PageRank to your site, than links from low PageRank sites. But there are other factors involved. Like the number of other links on the page that links to you (fewer is better).

I wrote a easy to understand summary of Chris Ridings' PageRank Explained paper you may be interested in. The whole paper can be a bit much to read through, but the summary gives you the basic gist. You can read it here: http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue070.htm
Oh, and the rainbow smiley can be found by clicking on "view more emoticons" to the left of the reply box when typing a reply!

Jill

PR6 is very decent, as Jill said. But don't make the mistake that your listing for the search term that you mentioned has anything to do with your front page's PR6. Each page stands by itself so you are competing on that term with a PR5 page and not a PR6 site.

That's the beauty of PageRank...you don't have to know anything about it...it just happens!

But the more you know about it the more it "just happens"

Phil.

Yes Phil, but remember that as far as PageRank is concerned the home page or front page is special in that is garners all the credit for the links from directories and sites that link just to the site and not to a particular page.

Lone Register, you have a PR of 6 because some 400 sites link to you and it appears that many of them are pretty good sites themselves. This incidentally is the way its supposed to work, you build a site with lots of good content and people link to you not because you ask them to but because they like what they find there.

Usually, yes, Mel. But not always; e.g. we have 2 dmoz listing and neither of them link to this domain's front page. Also, whether or not the front page keeps the PR it usually garners, depends on the site's internal linkages. But in this thread, I was pointing out that the ranked page has PR5 and not the PR6 of the site's front page. The PR5 page is the one that is competing and not the site.

Phil.

Hi Kevin
Sorry I should have said "...pages link to you" and not "...sites link to you". It looks like Google has indexed 256 pages from your site and the interlinkage between these pages is in itself a goodly factor in your PR of 6.

Well Phil I did say "...garners all the credit for the links from directories and sites that link just to the site and not to a particular page", so we are in complete agreement there, but I cannot agree with the idea that PageRank is somehow lost through linkage to other pages.

As I understand PageRank, any PageRank credit a page gets it keeps, whether it has one outbound link or a hundred. But I am always willing to learn, if you can point me to the portion of the PR equation that shows how PR is lost by linking, I will be happy to tug my forelock and bow down.
[/b]

Hi Kevin - you should give yourself more credit than you have, since if you search for Dewalt 9.6V Drill on Google (as opposed to "DeWalt 9.6v drill") you come up with the
Since I believe that most people do not use quotes when they search you are ranking very well, but the changes Phil suggested will doubtless help in the quoted search.

...if you can point me to the portion of the PR equation that shows how PR is lost by linking...

Well, as I've been just editing the latest version of Chris's PageRank Explained paper, I'm pretty sure I did just see that formula (with graphs and charts) in there. I think it was in the first version also. In fact, I was just showing it to my son who likes that sort of thing.

The link out, does appear to lessen the overall PageRank of the site, however, there are other benefits to having those links out, which essentially cancel out any negative PageRank "leakage" that anyone might be worried about.

I might have my head up my a$$ and be wrong about this, but I'm fairly certain that this is what I saw in the charts! (That sort of thing is not my strong suit!)

Jill

Have a read of this Mel:- http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html. It states Google's PageRank equation, which shows that a page's PR is reduced by links going from it. It has a calculator with it which calculates PR according to Google's equation. You can experiment with it to see how OBLs (outbound links - links from a page) affect a page's PR.

Phil.

You're not wrong Jill. The equation results in PR loss. There's no two ways about that. It's just mathematics. But the loss occurs to the page and not to the site. Only if the OBL is to an external target, does a PR loss to the site occur; otherwise it stays within the site.

There may be other factors that offset the PR loss but PR loss does occur.

Phil.

Hi Phil:
Here is the equation for PR (which BTW agrees with the on on your site):

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

I do not see any terms in this equation that deduct PR from a page, they only add it. What is the equation that deducts the PR for outbound links?