What Does Pagerank Mean in 2004? Options

[sansonj72]

How do you know if google is penalizing you for something?

[Everyman]

This thread was started two years ago. A PageRank of zero two years ago is not the same thing as a PageRank of zero in September 2004. Google has not updated PageRank since June 2004, and almost all new pages since the last update are showing a zero. This is true even when they're doing fine in the rankings on both Yahoo and Google, and show plenty of backlinks.

PageRank increasingly means little unless the page predates 2003. Even then it probably means nothing because this old page is probably "stuck" on the old PageRank.

Google stopped computing PageRank the old-fashioned way in April 2003, with update Cassandra. Since then I believe they've been using shortcut methods to "fake" PageRank. Anchor text in links is far more important than PageRank if that anchor text includes keywords. The classic computation of PageRank never considered text at all -- it was just number crunching based on the number and strength of links to a page.

Please, start a new thread if you are going to discuss PageRank. Don't append a comment to a thread that was started two years ago. You will have everyone confused.

[bragadocchio]

I've split this thread from the original.

I've also given it a new title, which I thought might allow us to examine the topic that James started, and also the points that Everyman makes in his post.

Google doesn't send people notices that their pages might be penalized. If your pages were though, then a notable drop in pagerank might have been an indication. Though, there were other reasons for a drop in page rank, and even the disappearance of a ranking sometimes happened out of error, or the loss of links.

If page rank isn't being updated on a toolbar, or in the Google directory, does that still mean that there isn't a calculation of page rank, and it's just not being displayed?

Or is pagerank being calculated in some different manner, as Everyman suggests?

Will we see updates to pagerank again?

If you've been keeping an eye on referrals from Google in your log files James, a drop in traffic being delivered from Google might be an indication that something is wrong.

But that could be that other people have moved past the site in search results, or created a much more persuasive page title, which people are clicking upon instead of the one that you are concerned about, or they are deciding to click on adwords displayed in those topics instead of pages shown in the search results.

[Everyman]

Thanks for splitting off that thread. PageRank is so unreliable that yesterday I deleted it from my ranking tool and explained why.

Since last Spring, when I first began to notice AdWords and AdSense that were blatantly offering high-PageRank links for sale, it became clear to a lot of entrepreneurs that Google would not go after link selling the way they did when they zapped SearchKing in 2002. They allowed those AdWords to appear without screening them out, and continue to do so, as far as I know. GoogleGuy was very noncommittal on the topic when he was directly asked about it.

Now we have a fair number of SEOs who are selling links. Today they're all in danger of going out of business because the toolbar is showing zero for new pages. Their clients are starting to ask questions about what they got for their money by paying for links. That's just about the only reason why folks are getting nervous about the lack of a PageRank update, as far as I can tell. You're hearing from SEOs who are dependent on rapid toolbar feedback because that's what their customers think they paid for. It doesn't even matter that the new pages may be ranking okay.

You have to ask yourself whether it is in Google's interest to update the toolbar PageRank. Why not just let things drift? That would solve much of the link-selling problem. I argued two years ago that the toolbar PageRank indicator was contributing to the link spam problem, and that Google should stop showing PageRank on the toolbar. But of course, if Google did that then they'd have a hard time justifying the "phone home" behavior of the toolbar, and they want this data.

I think Google has taken a middle position of not updating PageRank on the toolbar (assuming that they even have a credible number to display these days for newer pages). That way they get to eat their cake and have it too. The link vendors go out of business, and the toolbar still phones home -- for a number that is increasingly meaningless.

[tosheroon]

I can't see the linkmongers going out of business anytime soon, as braggadocchio points out just because the page rank tool isn't being updated and back link checking on google is inconsistent it doesn't mean that the combination of link popularity and anchor text is no longer affecting the serps. Google's aim is obviously to make it harder for link vendors to show their clients immediate results if new links take 2 or 3 months to affect the serps then clients will have to keep paying monthly fees on trust. This won't affect the success of link building companies that are able to engender that trust in clients by explaining the nature of the game to them, but it will show the hollowness of the hyperbolic claims made by the outlaw cowboys of the wild wild web.
I heard that this week google has changed the checksum computation of the toolbar that had been cracked and was allowing sites like prog and webmasterbrain to offer "pagerank search", it may be that once google has put them out of business it will start updating the toolbar again.

[sansonj72]

Google must have some really crazy people working there. They have us as their puppets, and we do as they wish. ABout 50% of my business comes from MSN and I do not even know if PR is anything. Google is just a big bandaid waiting to fall once a brilliant person comes up with a better search tool.

I honest believe business should pay to be in the search engines, as you do to be in the yellow pages, and then I think the highest payer should be at the top. However, one other curve to it. I think the consumers must have a part in this too, and this would be to rank the site once they are done.

This would give the consumers the best search. It is nice thinking of the old days when the little guy could be #1, just because is was savvy on the net, but now the big boys are playing, so the system must change.

My crazy question OT who owns the internet itself- the www?

[Ruud]

Who owns the WWW?.

Ruud

[sansonj72]

I actually have done alot of reading, and PR is huge in google land. If you have a PR of 7 and the right key phrases and wieght you will come up darn close to #1.

Now, how to value somebody getting you to a PR7. does it cost less to just pay google or to have somebody for $6 an hour send out emails to good links for exchange?

I know I would not do the link farm, because in time it will fall. Creating your own link system will always stand stronge.

Now to finding a net savvy college student. The other part of it is to have them do it in house, or pay the employee per each success link exchange not through a link farm that is a PR 4 or higher.

I feel if I have 2000 links coming in I am solid, so I got a long way to go.

[PRBot.Com]

Actually that guy is an idiot. The www is owned by the US federal government.

[sansonj72]

Does the OS GOVT own all of the internet? Not talking aol, cox, etc. I am talk about the part that everything feeds to. What about in Japan, etc.

[PRBot.Com]

Dude, the WWW is a privilige granted to the public by the US government.

The SERVERS which power the internet, are under public use licence from the US government. If the government decides to pull the plug internet servers would no longer be able to find one another.

The DNS for the internet is owned by the US government, pure and simple.

[Ruud]

The world wide web is a part of the Internet. Internet started with four connected computers. Currently the network consists of millions of networked systems.

Overseeing the Internet as a whole is the Internet Society. On their page about the infrastructure of the Internet you can see some organisations listed that you have possibly mistaken for US government privilledged ones.

The US government comes into the picture when in 1993 the US Dept. of Commerce created InterNIC. InterNIC ensures there are no domain name duplicates.

So, DNS is a distributed database with a central database that handles the distribution and "quality control". Were this central database to disappear thousands of DNS's around the world would still be able to operate.

Ever since the Internet has gone public no-one owns the Internet or can take full and complete control over it.

Ruud

[sansonj72]

MSN 47.09%
Yahoo! Web Sites 33.74%
Google 10.93%

My biggest search term is Arizona Foreclosures

MSN page 1
Yahoo page 1
Google not even page 4

I am guessing MSN and Yahoo got some sort of deal going on because I rank similar.

I am guessing more people use MSN than yahoo or more people use MSN than Yahoo for foreclosure searching.

The thing that kills me is that I hear google is so powerful, and I do not even come up there.

[Adrian]

MSN kind of use Yahoo! results, though Yahoo! always seems to have a bit of a twist on them. I think it's pretty much the same data set, just there are a few differences in some of the ranking.

I have seen elsewhere though, that MSN seem's to provide better conversion rates than the other big players. Perhaps thats quite apparent with Google as its used by so many people simply gathering information.

In a sense it's good to have a bit of a spread like that. Certainly you're better positioned if/when Google goes messing round with it's algos and suddenly you drop down further. If you were fairly reliant on Google, that would obviously be bad for business, but at the moment, you, hopefully, shouldn't be doing too badly if any one of those 3 does soemthing a bit odd.

To improve the ranking in Google though, it's probably worth looking at who's above you on their rankings, and where they appear in the Yahoo/MSN ranks. Then see how they differ from your site.

If they are a good bit higher than you in Google, but a good bit lower than you in the other 2, you should be able to spot some differences, and add on a few things while hopefully not taking away what Yahoo/MSN like about the site.

[Mike521]

I agree that PR is still important. If you're in a competitive area and all the sites about your topic are PR7 or 8 with thousands of backlinks, you're just not going to be able to compete with a PR2 or 3.

But the PR is really an indicator of the more important factor -- quality incoming links. The problem isn't that your PR is low, the problem is that you don't have enough quality incoming links. a low PR is a symptom of the problem.

you want the links not because they'll make your PR go up, but because they'll point to your site with hopefully some good keywords as link text, or very close to the link text, helping you rank for those phrases. if they're links from good sites, they'll also drive some traffic directly.

but regardless of all that, I think we'd all agree that we'd take a link from a completely unrelated PR10 site, even if it's just for the PR benefit we'd get. if someone offered to me at no cost, I'd definitely take it.

[sansonj72]

"Bottom line though, don’t shoot for PR 7 shoot for #1 in allinanchor" Can somebody help me understand allin anchor- is this like an anchor next to the link or is this the text in the link, etc.?

[DaveN]

"allinanchor- is this like an anchor next to the link or is this the text in the link"

Basically allinanchor is to show the sites which have the most backlinks with that keyword in the anchor text.

If your backlinks use www.mysite.com as the link then you will be #1 if all the incoming links are “Big Bad Dave” and you have the most incoming links then you will be #1

DaveN

[sansonj72]

So if all of my links say "Arizona HUD Homes"
<a href="http://www.KINGofHUD.com" target="_blank">Arizona HUD Homes</a>
"<a href="http://www.KINGofHUD.com" target="_blank">Arizona HUD Homes</a>"
Then my site will incrase to the top of the search engines for this phrase?

[sansonj72]

I meant my inbound links
[/url]<a href="http://www.KINGofHUD.com" target="_parent">Arizona HUD Homes</a>[url]

CODE

<a href="http://www.KINGofHUD.com" target="_parent">Arizona HUD Homes</a>

<a href=\"http://www.KINGofHUD.com\" target=\"_parent\">Arizona HUD Homes</a>

[/url]

[DaveN]

thats the idea, but quite a few studies show that 100% anchor text will make a little led start to flicker on some big console in Mt View