Google Pagerank Means Something
I always get a kick out of the Pagerank (PR) debate that occurs in the webmaster community. This is one of those hot topics where about half the people say Pagerank means nothing while the other half believes it does. I personally side with those that believe Pagerank is important.
It seems that most everyone refuses to look at Google’s own explanation of Pagerank. A quote from this page notes:
PageRank reflects Google’s view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
Now if Google says pages with a higher Pagerank are more likely to appear at the top of the search results, I am inclined to believe them. It seems the people that publicly state Pagerank is nothing more then a number are either uninformed or have been burnt buying and selling text links.
I do agree that Pagerank is only one variable in ranking for specific keywords. Onpage SEO and offpage SEO (link building) are the other important factors besides domain age. But the fact remains that offpage search engine optimization is all about link building which in turn improves ones Pagerank.
There are those that say Pagerank has nothing to do with traffic. I beg to differ. If my site is likely to appear higher in the serps because I have a higher Pagerank, you can rest assured Pagerank is an important factor if I want traffic from Google.
The Pagerank we see in the Google Toolbar is only a snapshot from the past as most everyone agrees on. So the reliability of using it as a gauge of a page’s health can be deceiving. Nevertheless, it provides a base point to judge how important Google believes the page is.
Rest assured Pagerank is important, which is why there is a large sub-economy for link sales. Even expired and dropping domains with Pagerank are fetching a good dollar these days. And if you look at some of the highly competitive niches, you will find many unrelated backlinks on high PR pages to high ranking sites.
While the debate rages on whether or not Pagerank is important, search engine optimization professionals continue to quietly develop backlinks from pages with high Pagerank.
Tags: Google Pagerank
