Page Rank Myths in Linkbuilding

2009-07-22 Christoph C. Cemper

22 Jul

Home » Page Rank Myths in Linkbuilding

Page Rank Myths in Linkbuilding

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.

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27 Responses to Page Rank Myths in Linkbuilding

Red Mud Rookie
July 22, 2009 at 11:04 pm
What a great post. thank you, I will be distributing this to clients and colleagues alike. I had a case this week where a client thought anything that was a PRG should be ignored, but I simply picked out a relevant link to his site from the BBC and asked him if he really thought that was worthless.

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Adam
July 23, 2009 at 8:44 am
PageRank is a myth!

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Florida SEO - Edward Beckett
July 24, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Content ~ Links ~ Conversions …

PageRank …

Doesn’t Fit in The Evaluation Very Well

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Dave
July 25, 2009 at 7:16 pm
While most of the post is reasonably well done, it does by it’s nature, perpetuate another myth; that PageRank isn’t valuable.

Uhm…Why? Because I believe we’re talking about TBPR here – aka ToolBar PageRank – actual PR is VERY important and is the core of the Google machine. PageRank is a nodal web graph algorithm… ToolBar PR is another beast altogether and is what you’re actually talking about in this post… ya know?

PR = PageRank, a floating point value we do not know.

TBPR = an oft exported simplified metric that is even been known to be manually adjusted.

We should be careful to get the terminology right lest we create new myths :0)

Have a good one… my 2c for what its worth.

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Hobo
July 26, 2009 at 2:55 am
I read this too the other day, and elected not to comment then. I too think Toolbar PR and PR should be clearly distinguished.

One point I’d like to add is Toolbar PR is clearly NOT 3 months out of date from my observations.

I’ve seen pages 2 weeks old aquire Toolbar PR in the last few updates. I also think a page aquires REAL PR within hours/days.

Shaun

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Christoph C. Cemper
July 27, 2009 at 11:25 am
Hey guys, thanks for your feedback!
—
@dave: you are _ABSOLUTELY_ right that Toolbar PR is completely different from Google’s internal PR. I hoped to have said that clear in the video when I refered to Google “exporting” the data – i.e. generating any weird truncated stuff out of the internal data they have available… but then it might be a bit clearer on the German version of this video. Running this series bi-lingual might let me believe I emphasized important points already, altough I said that an hour before on the german version
—
@Hobo: I agree that I’ve seen _some_ occassions where Toolbar PR was updated very quick – in one case it was updated (wrong, ie too high) on an inner page no more than 18 hours after publishing – but was then corrected after 10 days or so… however – the GENERAL rule of thumb is that you have to wait up to 3 months for an update
—
thanks
Christoph

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Hobo
July 28, 2009 at 2:59 pm
We’ll agree to disagree lol

i think Toolbar PR synchronisation, around the time of an update, is only a couple of weeks out of date

3 months was old school. Keep an eye out for the next update…..

All the best

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Matthew Hunt
September 1, 2009 at 5:28 am
PR means nothing – so glad to hear also confirm this. Same thing stompernet said. I listen to Aaron Wall, Stompernet & you.

Natural link building is what you are after. A Variety of links are required to ensure decent rankings.

Keep up the great tutorials!

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Gerrid
September 4, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Great post! PR has mattered for sometime. I’m pretty sure Eric Ward has been preaching this for years.

Thanks for posting,
Gerrid

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Overseas Property - Carol Smith
September 17, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Also, PageRank is a good measure of your website’s back links. False. You’re right about PageRank information being about 3 months old and it has been at least 3 months since Google already gave you credit for the links. Second, it is affected by the quality of links and even the number of links on a particular page. Third, the PR info is frequently posted wrong by Google and doesn’t match the Link Popularity credit Google is actually giving you. The best advice… don’t obsess over PageRank.

Hope you post more great updates.

Carol

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Led Lighting Australia
October 12, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Interesting article, but i dont know that i would go as far as to say that PageRank means nothing. People should not obsess over pr however even though the data may be old, i still think its a fairly good guide to measuring the quality of a link… especially if a page has held a high pr for 3-6 months…

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joe Garcia
October 27, 2009 at 7:55 am
I found what you had to say in the video informative and straight forward. i really liked it.
thank you; now if only i could afford your services I would be more happy.

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TermMonster
December 5, 2009 at 7:43 am
Good article. I knew there was a reason we subcribe to your site. We are definately seeing this PR metric determine a lot of things online in our industry. Thanks for the heads-up.

TM

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JLee Jones
December 16, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I have always been suspicious about buying links but now you have made it very clear.
If I write an article related to my website and link it will it help my ranking.

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Aaron
January 17, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Great post but I also don’t agree with a few points. IMO PageRank is still worth something and does effect rankings.

I look at it from a different angle. The general page rank of your website doesn’t effect your rankings on its own when compared to the competitors in your targeted SERPS.

But having a high PR website can do wonders for your internal page rakings when using a great internal link structure with targeted anchor text.

WordPress blogs have the best internal link structure out of any site format when using the recent post, top post widgets and a related post plugin.

I believe that internal links carry a lot of weight when ranking. Recent post/top post widgets create sitewide links on a blog, this means there is a backlink pointing back to the pages displayed in the widgets from every other page on the site. The larger the website, the more internal backlinks there are pointing to those pages. The anchor text of the links are the title of that page. Lets say your site has 100 pages indexed, that obviously means there are 99 internal links pointing back to each page.

Now this is where a high PR site kicks ass over a low PR site.
Lets say I have a PR6 wordpress blog and a PR2 wordpress blog. Both with 100 pages indexed in Google. Its pretty safe to say that nearly all the internal pages of the PR6 blog will have a PR around 4, while the PR2 blogs internal pages will be PR1′s.

Now lets say you posted an article on both blogs with the exact same title which then appears in the recent post section of their respective blog navigation. Both of the published articles instantly get 100 backlinks from their respective blog pages with the same anchor text. One with 100 backlinks that average a PR4 and the other with 100 PR1 backlinks. Now… you will see the PR6 blog article outrank the PR2 blog article 100% of the time, so you cant say PR isnt worth anything.

PR defines a websites authority. Thats why you see the articles from high PR authority blogs and article directories rank up the top of the SERPS as soon as they are indexed, all due to the high number of internal backlinks from high PR pages. Wikipedia has the ultimate internal link structure coz they use sooo many in content internal backlinks. No wonder they rank high for EVERYTHING.

If I had to choose between a relevant PR5 or PR1 backlink. I would choose the PR5 link every time and im sure everyone else would as well.

Christoph – I’m not sure what you mean when you said a new website doesnt have any pagerank for a few weeks or month. Do you mean it doesn’t appear to have any pagerank on the toolbar due to the toobars infrequent update, or the new site litrally doesnt have any pagerank until the update.

As I understand, every page that is indexed in Google is given a little ration of PR. So the page is above PR0 but well below PR1. Thats why it is possible to get a PR1 on a website homepage without gaining a single external backlink. All you need is 100 – 200 pages of content to get indexed and send their little ration of indexed PR juice back to the home page. The more pages indexed, the more juice flows back.

I believe that PR is also changing constantly in real time. As soon as Google spiders a backlink to your site, that PR juice starts flowing.

Quick tip for readers.
A lot of people would wonder why, but it appears that some link building efforts take weeks to effect their website rankings. Thats usually due to Google not detecting and spidering those backlinks for weeks, since they may have come from deep within a site. To save on the waiting and see possible overnight rank improvement, simply ping the page you got the link on using ping-o-matic of ping goat. This kicks Google into gear and forces it to spider the page within minutes.

Thanks again for the great post mate, sorry about my long dribbling comment.

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SEO Freelancer Philippines
January 19, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Thanks for the info. Your article will enlighten webmasters about PageRank. I always see a lot of buyers at freelancing sites always mentioning about PageRank in their link building requirements.

Although PageRank gives value to a website, quality content is still more important. Content that you can link to improve your site’s ranking.

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Cass
February 10, 2010 at 2:23 am
Very informative article, I’m going to post a link on my site.
@Aaron..I think you are right about the internal linking.

@ Overseas Property – Carol Smith I agree with your advice.. don’t obsess over PageRank

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YourNetBiz Training Channel
February 28, 2010 at 5:54 am
Very interesting points of view and discussion in the comments. Just goes to show how much fun Google is having pointing us, SEO fans, in all kinds of directions.

Best,
Ana/YourNetBiz

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Tony Murphy
March 26, 2010 at 5:09 pm
excellent information, well structured and presented,

I hope this comment was worth leaving as the page only has a Page Rank of 2

cheers
Tony

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Randy Brickhouse Sr.
June 28, 2010 at 3:50 am
What a great post! I am a relative novice at link building, and online marketing in general. I have been promoting my site for about 3 months now. I am beginning to see some good results in my backlinking strategy, however, there are so many people online with different concepts about what’s the right way, and the wrong way of link building, one could really start to get confused with it all, if they are not careful.

With the search engines changing the way they do things at the drop of a hat, it is all a new guy like myself can do to keep up, but that’s cool I enjoy a challenge. Have any of you noticed folks on line talking about the mass disapperance of backlinks? It’s happened to me. Backlink building can be a tedious process, sure can’t stand to lose links like that. I felt that some of the comments were very informative, especially Aarons’.

Thanks for the lesson everyone, and God bless.

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Rap na Veia
October 8, 2010 at 12:22 am
I can’t believe what I’ve just read. But it makes sense, it seems the only way to know if a web site is good is to google its name.

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Janitorial Supplies
January 8, 2011 at 10:12 pm
Our ecom business about a year ago was a page rank 5 and since then been downgraded to a PR3 yet our traffic and sales have more than doubled. Don’t pay much mind to page rank is my take as well.

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Website Value Calculator
May 2, 2011 at 12:55 am
Nice post,every questions about back linking was answered.

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seo lahore
July 15, 2011 at 12:19 pm
PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. PageRank is not simply based upon the total number of inbound links. The basic approach of PageRank is that a document is in fact considered the more important the more other documents link to it, but those inbound links do not count equally.

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Bac Pham
August 31, 2011 at 11:25 am
Your videos were helpful. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us

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John
July 6, 2012 at 7:22 pm
I was unsure if the page rank is relevant or not but form your article I understand you don’t really belive in the page rank. The probem is many people take that rank for good. Its like carved in stone or something. I personally don’t pay much attention to it but its good to know a websites/sub page rank!

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JC
January 21, 2013 at 4:40 am
Great information and some points there I wasn’t aware of. I’ve found over time that PageRank seems to matter less for me than it used to.

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