What is Google PageRank, and why do we need it?

Well, let me first start out by saying that we don't need it! At least not anymore. I'll explain.

Google PageRank (PR) results from a ballot of other pages on the web, and how important a page is.

A hyper link would support the rank of a particular page. PR would depend on the amount and value of links coming to a page. The scale is 0-10, with ten being the greatest, or at least the most important to Google. The scale is based on link quality and importance.

What the PR did was represent the likelihood that a random click would arrive at a certain page.

The Google toolbar could be downloaded, which would reveal the PR of a certain page, but not necessarily in real time.

Over the years PR has been easily manipulated. A low PR site redirected by a 302 header, or refresh tag, to a high PR site, would then show a high PR. In actuality, a PR0 site could redirect to a PR10 Google site, and the PR0 site would then show up as a PR10 on the next Google update.

It is also a possibility that higher PR sites would sell backlinks to the lower sites, which concerned Google because that would be gaming the system, and reducing the quality of the search results.

Eventually Google decided to use "nofollow" for the rel attribute HTML link, so that some links would not be considered for PR. In actuality people could try and raise PR by creating many false backlinks to their site.

The reason that Google is one of the top search engines, is that it has the ability to crawl, or spider, two billion web pages, and keep its database up to date. Eventually sites were checked everyday by the freshbot crawl.

What does a high PR mean for a website when its accurate?
-there are popular incoming links
-there are good page characteristics
-there is relevant content

By far, link popularity is most significant to Google. Even a page with search terms in the title, header, and body, would get buried for lack of backlinks. PR also determines Google's crawl. The higher PR sites would be crawled first, and then the lower, if there was time. It was once said that, "The nature of PageRank is so discriminatory, that it's rather like the exact opposite of affirmative action." Lately, a lot of webmasters would rather not give away backlinks, even though they may be in need of backlinks for their own sites.

Should excellent on page characteristics be cancelled out by few backlinks?

Should the crawlers begin with higher PR sites every time, only to fall short of a full crawl cycle, again and again?

If there was something on a new site that we needed to know about, we wouldn't have gotten any help from Google. Over time, it would seem that Google has become more of an advertising agent, rather than a search engine. Some time soon maybe they will bring in Orion; the algorithm invented by Ori Allon, an Australian student.

In any event, it seems as though PR is a thing of the past, as newer sites are getting indexed, and showing up on page 1 of certain Google searches.

Many people who optimize their sites well for search engines, conclude that PR is now irrelevant. It's now been proven that a PR6 site, could easily rank higher than a PR8 in the search results.

But you didn't really care what Google thought of your site, did you? Wouldn't the better question be; what do my customers think of my site?

Looks like PR will soon fade away like so many other things. Good riddance.

Are You Still Concerned With Google PageRank? Copyright 2008 © Dave Earley

http://www.init-2-winit.org

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