There are still too much myths and misconceptions regarding PageRank and its sense for link building in 2009. Some companies and “experts” still behave like we were in 2004.
Sergey Brin
Larry Page
Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented the PageRank algorithm 10 years ago and due to this created the search engine Google. Another 5 years later there was a whole industry and pricing system for the PageRank. At that time the link selling industry was booming. Unfortunately a lot changed and everything is more complicated than it was a few years ago. The 7 Golden Rules of White Hat Link Building are 7 general tips for obtaining sustainable and great Backlinks. There are too much misconceptions about the PageRank and today I want to address five of this myths.
1. High PageRank has nothing to do with the Ranking of a Website
High PageRank = High Ranking?
The name of PageRank often implies that it has something to do with the ranking of a website but that is not true at all. There were actually websites with a lower PageRank than other sites but they outranked them. This is not because of the PageRank of this pages but due to the topical relevance for certain keywords. Another important thing is the topical relevance of the Backlinks to a website. Actually the green bar of the PageRank symbol never had anything to do with the ranking of a specific website since I started with online Marketing 7 years ago.
2. PageRank is never current
Currentness of Google PR
Even if you do look at PageRank and I tell you please don’t do it; what you see is 3 months old. Google updates every three months or they call it export which implies something like generating the data . Therfore it is not a good idea to base your todays decisions on PageRank data which is 3 months old. There are exceptions but generally this doesn’t happen. Due to this a new website cannot have PageRank for a certain period of time, this could be weeks or even months.
3. User don’t care about PageRank
You don't need PageRank
Google actually doesn’t display the PageRank metric in the toolbar by default anymore for ages. They disabled the display of the PageRank 2 or 3 years ago and if you would like to check the PageRank you have to enable it manually in the Google toolbar options. There are a lot of SEO tools out there that allow you to show the PageRank but the matter of fact is that normal users don’t care about PageRank. They even don’ t know that there is something called PageRank and that they can enable it manually.
4. PageRank returns random data
Matt Cutts of Google
If we check the toolbar PageRank, keep in mind that this is always different to the data Google uses internally, we are not sure if this is what Google exported. Last year in June 2008 Matt Cutts, the head of web spam engineers at Google, confirmed that they do return random PageRank data. They make fun of people who want to check the data. Often this happens if you query a lot of PageRank data for different pages of your website. You can be pretty sure that you will get their random data. They do this in order to confuse you. Just like they crippled their backlink command, the site command and the cache command. Google actually doesn’t want to support web masters. Due to this we invented the CEMPER.COM Linkjuice tool because we want to check if a page is juicy independently of the site or cache command of Google. The visitors of the A4U in Amsterdam already have access to this Linkjuice tool and we want to extend this prospectively.
5. PageRank as metric for pricing
PageRank as metric for pricing?
Don’t let you mislead when it comes to putting a price tag on a link. If you think about investing time and money in a link please keep in mind that the PageRank of a page doesn’t indicate its value. This simply implies that you cannot put a price tag on the link based on the PageRank. Actually last week I had a discussion with a client about this and remember we are in July 2009. I would assume that advanced link builders have good sense for the uselessness of the PageRank metric. The next time somebody tells you that he can bring you some high PageRank links in, make sure that you properly understand what this means. Essentially this could mean that you get a lot of spam. Seeing the PageRank doesn’t mean that there is one. It could have been a healthy site three months ago but today there are a lot of viagra and casino links. There is already an article about Who are your Neighbors in the Link Building World and you will learn more about co-citations.
Now it should be clear what PageRank actually means in 2009 and I provided you the most important facts regarding the Google PageRank.
joe Garcia
TermMonster
JLee Jones
(609) 910 0736
July 22, 2009