PR is important?

[tommy_sir]

when the PR is high, what does it means? :confused:

[Masetek]

PR = page rank.

You usually have high PR if you have alot of incoming links and bookmarks. Basically, the seach engines see high PR as an indicator that you have a popular site with some good content (otherise people wouldnt link to you)

Thats the basic expanation.

to check the pagerank of a page go here: http://www.pagerank.net/

[r2d2]

PR is Google's measure of a page's importance. It is calculated for each page using a formula which takes into account the links from other pages pointing to the page. (Bookmarks don't actually make any difference to PR) And it is only used by Google, and is just one small part of how they rank a particular page for a certain search term.

[Chris]

Also it stands for PageRank after Lawrence Page it's creator. It is a proper noun.

People often confuse it with your page's rank (ie the position of your page in the search engines).

[LuckyShima]

Also it stands for PageRank after Lawrence Page it's creator. It is a proper noun. People often confuse it with your page's rank (ie the position of your page in the search engines).
Although this is the origin of the term, if there was no awareness of how it would be applied then it is an incredible coincidence that it actually measures the ranking of a page in terms of the relative value of that page over others.

Given this apparent incredible coincidence, it is possible that the term has come to mean something other than was intended by its originators. PR does actually measure the rank of a page (the green bar rank, 0-10), so it would not be surprising if the term now means what it actually does rather than embody the name of the originator of the ranking system.

If it was ShimaRank, this would not have happened, but with PageRank the meaning can change in line with the ambiguity.

Otherwise explaining this to a novice becomes like the routine "who's on first?"

PageRank measures the rank of a page. But it is not called PageRank because it measures the rank of a page, it is called PageRank because someone called Page developed a system to rank a page. So you measure page rank by using PageRank, but the term PageRank does not refer to the rank of the page.

Anyway, words change their meaning, as any middle-aged female named 'Gay' would be well aware.

Click here to see the sad demise of the name 'Gay':

http://www.thenamemachine.com/baby-names-girls/Gay.html

[Chris]

PageRank does not measure the rank of a page. It measures the total weight of the incoming links for a page.

Its important to stress the origins of the term, and it's correct definition, to prevent the typical confusion of "My pagerank is 5 and my competitor's is 4 how come I don't rank higher?"

[r2d2]

Also it stands for PageRank after Lawrence Page it's creator.

Wow, that is indeed quite a coincidence.

Also, here's some more info on PR: http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/

[LuckyShima]

PageRank does not measure the rank of a page. It measures the total weight of the incoming links for a page.
Its important to stress the origins of the term, and it's correct definition, to prevent the typical confusion of "My pagerank is 5 and my competitor's is 4 how come I don't rank higher?"
There are two different meanings of 'rank' here. Your hypothetical concerned webmaster is using a definition of 'rank' in terms of search engine rankings, with one on top of the other, and how this is not related to "PR".

I was using it in the sense that the "rank" in PageRank actually refers to the "5" and "4" that is depicted in the green bar, it actually refers directly to the "total weight of the incoming links for a page" and ignores search engine positions. PR in this sense refers to the rank of the page along a scale of 1 to 10, something more akin to decile rank where a scale of 1 to 10 is given (although with decile rank 10 is worst and uses a different increment than PR).

Then, to answer your concerned webmaster, the rank of the page in terms of PR is only one element amongst a number which determines the rank of the page in the search engines.

But I see your point, if you use the term PR and say that it refers to the page ranks on a scale of 1 to 10, then the webmaster might rightly ask why isn't this translated into search engine rankings.