Life Without The Little Green Bar Options

[AbleReach]

If Google were to drop offering the PR bar, would it change how you do business? I'll bet some of you are tired of talking and talking (and talking) about this! To go a next step, what handy measurements and measurers would you like to see in a first-step quality gage?

What toolbar-type quality trackers do you use now? I've just come across the SEO Quake SEObar.

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Aug 30 2007, 02:44 PM

[bwelford]

That's a pretty neat SEObar from SEO Quake.

Perhaps a thought I was having today can ride piggy-back on your topic, Elizabeth. Many people are concerned that Google will no longer label web pages that are in the supplemental index. Nothing seems to be offered via the Google Webmaster Central as of yet to help on this.

One presumes Google's reason for not offering this information is that for them it does nothing and there are only a minority of website owners who realize it is important. Perhaps they could consider the following idea. It wouldn't give too much away but would be very helpful as a quality measure of a website.

What I would ask is that they give the percentage of web pages on a website that are in the regular index, as opposed to the supplemental index. It could have a catchy name like say the RegRank. For the formula-philes among you,

RegRank = No. of web pages from domain in regular Google index / Total no. of web pages from domain as indexed in both the regular and supplemental indices

For example, I'm finding that for some very new websites less than 20% of web pages are in the regular index. This compares with over 70% of web pages in the regular index for established websites. If they have a problem with a percentage value, they could always convert it to a little red bar if they wish.

Do I hear any supporters for the idea?

[yannis]

Barry

I am not sure, Google themselves are trying to narrow the difference between the two:

The distinction between the main and the supplemental index is therefore continuing to narrow. Given all the progress that we've been able to make so far, and thinking ahead to future improvements, we've decided to stop labeling these URLs as "Supplemental Results." Of course, you will continue to benefit from Google's supplemental index being deeper and fresher.

From googlewebmastercentral.

There should be two distinct quality trackers. The first one is the relevancy to one's query.

The second one (assuming someone just typed the url) should be the 'site's authority'. I am not sure how this could be tracked other than some form of PageRank!

Yannis

[A.N.Onym]

Given that I use Opera, I've been living without the green bar forever. Nothing will change for me (I don't buy/sell links or hunt for PR in another browser, too).

What will change is that I won't have to educate clients on why that green bar is evil and why they shouldn't waste money on links that don't pass value (including buying links). It'll save plenty of time, make my work more efficient and generate more profit to my clients.

However, I think that many clients will find another idol to worship, such as volumes of traffic, flashy looking websites, etc. So I doubt Internet marketing will stop being fun


Normally, I check the page content and see how good and related it to my target audience. Checking total amount of links in Yahoo helps, too.

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Aug 30 2007, 07:15 PM

[EGOL]

.edu and .gov links

[SEOProOne]

The only thing I use the green bar for is when I get a request for a link exchange I want to know if the bar is green or gray. If it is gray then I look to see if it is a new site that has not been indexed or is it a site that has been banned. Personally I like it for this one reason.

[swainzy]

Hello SEOProOne and welcome to our forums.

If you feel like it, come on over to Introduce Yourself and tell us a bit about yourself.

Cheers,
Donna

[fisicx]

Page Rank, what's that?

Don't have the Google tool bar installed so I have no idea what PR a site has. And it doesn't really matter either as long as the site meets my needs

[Dominic]

The green bar was important to me when I was on my training wheels and learning. Today, it means nothing and I don't care if it disappears.

When there is a green bar update that I notice, I do check my own sites out of curiosity to see what they get, out of novelty sake, but that exercise itself tends to point to the pointlessness of the green bar.

For example, I've noticed on one site a decrease from a PR5 to a PR3 but a significant increase in ranking against competitors with higher PR.

Later in my SEO experience I've learnt what matters - tool bar PR does not... but I'd like to keep it around to distract the young players.

Keep their eyes on the tool bar PR I say. Keep the young players distracted and consumed by it.

[fisicx]

Keep their eyes on the tool bar PR I say. Keep the young players distracted and consumed by it.

I like it! Let them fret over their PR and let the rest of us build popular websites that rank on their merits not on their links.

[AbleReach]

Keep their eyes on the tool bar PR I say. Keep the young players distracted and consumed by it.

LOL

In that case, let's have a bar that changes color once in a while - the reaction to even a few hours of a purple PR bar would be much fun to watch, eh?

[Halfdeck]

I like the green bar. It makes some link buyers spend more money.