Is Page Rank really that important?

[Anat]

I wrote a whole article about this but would like to hear opinions here. Here's a quote from Chris's article "Affiliate Gold" (http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/affiliate_gold/) :



Before you try to make an affiliate site like this you need to research your keywords and the competition. You should first of all figure out which terms related to your product are searched the most. For instance which is searched for more often, "Digital Camera Deals," or "Digital Camera Sales." Once you find the most popular set of keywords for your product (the keywords you will use to link to your affiliate page) then you need to find out the current competition for those words. So do a search on Google for those words and check the PageRank of the first site to come up. If your Overall PageRank Power is greater than the PageRank of the current #1 site then you will likely have the #1 spot if you make this affiliate site and cross-promote it with your current site.


I don't see that in Google search results. For example, I have a website called Goldfish-care.com. I reached a PageRank of 4 pretty easily. Google mentions 35 incoming links to that page. The keywords I'm after are "goldfish care" and being hyphernated in my domain name, they are in all of the incoming links anchor text.

Now, run a search for "goldfish care". The no. 1 site that comes up has a PR of 3... My website is no. twenty something. There are sites with various PR between us. So, unless I'm missing something with "overall PR power", I don't see that PR has such a direct impact of your SERP.

Opinions more than welcome. I'm not trying to put down what Chris said - on the contrary. I really want to understand this better. You can read more of my thoughts in my article (in my signature).

[James]

It's also the category of websites linking to you. Not to mention the fact that those websites may have many links pointed towards them that you can't see via link: in Google because they're below a PR of 4, and therefore aren't shown in the reports.

They also could have a higher keyword density than your page.

[Anat]

Oh I'm sure Google has some internal secret logic for the search results - all I'm saying is that PR may not be as directly related to that as sometimes suggested. Therefore, no need to become overly concerned with your PR - as it's not necessarily the parameter that will make you rank first for your keywords and key phrases.

[nohaber]

PR certainly matters a lot. IMHO, google's ranking is determined in this way:
1) google calculates the IR(info retrieval) score of a page. it is based on on page + anchor text keyword matches
2) pagerank is combined with the Information Retrieval Score (IR Score) to find the OldScore
3) next OldScore is modified by the LocalRank (links from other well ranked pages).

So PR matters in both the OldScore and LocalRank is derived from the OldScore of the pages that link to you. You can get LocalRank benefit from a page that has 10000 links on it.

A PR3 page can outrank a PR4 page in many ways.
1. The toolbar PR may be not up to date with the internal PR
2. Toolbar PR is logarithmic. The PR3 page can be in the higher range of PR3 and the PR4 can be in the lower range of PR4.
3. the IR scores might be different. Who has more anchor text links with keywords?
4. finally, just 1 very well ranked page can link to you and boost your final ranking score by LocalRank. the PR3 page may have LocalRank links while the PR4 page may have none.

[James]

Oh I'm sure Google has some internal secret logic for the search results
Of course, their algorithm which was designed by literal geniouses (most of which went to Stanford University)

I agree that sometimes people focus too much on PR (like not linking to a website because it's in the sandbox, or just hasn't been properly crawled yet, which can sometimes take quite the while)

http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Who has more anchor text links with keywords

So the number of links matters as well?

ie if a page has 1 on target link from a high PR site and another has lots of low PR links from lots of on target sites (even if the PR transferred is exactly the same and I know this is impossible to measure), then the page with lots of links to it will score better than the page with the 1 link in?

Is that what you are saying? It makes sense to me

[nohaber]

So the number of links matters as well? Yes, the number of keyword rich links matter. More is better. I think that not every link passes anchor text value. One could also argue that Google may differentiate anchor text value based on the PR of the link, but that is something only Google knows. Another thing is that very low PR links may not pass anchor text at all.

[r2d2]

2. Toolbar PR is logarithmic. The PR3 page can be in the higher range of PR3 and the PR4 can be in the lower range of PR4.


<pedant mode - sorry :) >

The fact that the toolbar PR is logarithmic isnt really connected with the fact that the toolbar PR is rounded down to the nearest integer. Sure the PR3 could actually be PR3.99, and the PR4 might be PR4.00 so theres not much difference, but thats due to the rounding, not the logarithmic nature of PR.

</pedant mode>

Phew, sorry nohaber, dont normally like to be pedantic, must be in a funny mood...

All this talk has given me ideas of reverse engineering Google. Analyse enough SERPs and the pages factors, and Im sure you could come up with a good model.

Anat, despite what you say, it looks like they beat you for anchor text:
http://www.google.com/search?q=allinanchor%3Agoldfish+care&sourceid=firefox&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Also they have better keyword density in the title, but they dont have h1...

[Chris]

That article was written before Localrank (if Google is using it, which I think they are).

Also remember that the toolbar is stale lately and does not show up to date pagerank.

Finally, PR is just an indicator, what you really need are incoming links with good anchor text, PR just is a way to measure how much weight you have coming with those links and then its up to you to make sure they use good anchor text.

IF you're doing everything right though, just get some links from on topic sites and then wait.

[nohaber]

I think Google uses LocalRank because every time the DMOZ category increases its ranking for fitness software, I lose my rankings (I don't have a listing like my competitors). For diet software, DMOZ is not high on the ranks and I get better ranks.

My only hesitation is whether Google calculates it on the fly, or pre-calculates it for very frequently searched queries. I am hesitating because answering queries in 0.2 seconds is tough, and LocalRank slows down the response because it has to wait for the prev steps (the OldScore).

[intelliot]

No direct impact: there are PR 0, 1, 2 (according to toolbar) sites that rank nicely for certain keywords.

[r2d2]

title tag also has no direct impact:
http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=football&btnG=Search
2,3,5,6 dont have 'football' in the title.

h1 also has no direct effect, 1, 2 and 3 above dont have it in a h1 tag. (didnt check any further).

Italics and underline also no good, first result doesnt have 'football' in them...

See where I'm going with this?

[James]

They do impact though.

It's not like if you include football in your title tag you're automatically #1. There are hundreds, maybe thousands or more factors going into your ranking and title tag, PR, h# tags, etc. are just parts of getting a better rank.

[r2d2]

Exactly!

I was attempting to show intelliot that seeing a few examples of low PR sites being high in the SERPs doesnt imply that PR has no direct effect.

[intelliot]

Good point, it's a good and rather unpredictable algorithm :)

[Anat]

Thanks everyone - very interesting thread!