Are You Focused on Results, Or Obsessing Over Meaningless Numbers? (PageRank)

It isn’t really level if it isn’t universally applied. I know plenty of sites that sell links based on PR that were not given any kind of penalty.

PR is used as a metric, and all the traffic from those table’s people make add up.
More traffic means more subscribers and more links and more chance at promotion on social media so more traffic and links.

It is only one small part of the puzzle, but when you would have to boost Technorati from 1000 to 500 to see any gain on some of those charts, or Alexa from 20k to 10K, or gain 200 Bloglines subscribers, it is more significant.

I have PR5 sites with less than 20 links.

Now being a PR3 with 40K links is a bit of a joke.

On the on hand, you are correct. The PR number itself should be meaningless. However, having a low PR makes it tougher for an SEO to convince potential clients they know how to get a good response out of Google.

Also, the hit is not universally applied. The Yarn Harlot’s blog still has PR5. My knitting blog went from PR 4 to 2. (There could be very good reasons for this.)

Obviously, these moves are of interest to SEO’s — even if what they learn is that PR is no longer correlated with getting good ranking in SERPS!

Toolbar PR is certainly something that is often over examined. The important thing for people to understand is the difference between Google Toolbar PageRank and and Google PageRank.

Toobar PR is simply the green bar that they publicly show through their toolbar and used to be updated on average every 3 months or so, although it hasn’t been updated now for around 6 months.

The actual Google PageRank is not visible to anyone other than a select few engineers at Google.

The toolbar PR does not directly effect anyones rankings, while the actual PR does indeed effect every pages rankings.

I don’t think this situation is Google updating their toolbar pagerank and it’s certainly not everyone losing toolbar PR. None of my sites have been effected and I have sites from PR0 to PR6. However I don’t sell links and very rarely do paid reviews, not that theres anything wrong with that in my eyes, it’s just not my thing.

These toolbar downgrades seen to have something to do with paid links, but some sites that lost PR don’t sell links so it’s very hard to judge.

When Google introduced PR they probably didn’t know it’ll get out of hand in this manner. Hence, tracking back now and penalizing sites and blogs to save PageRank’s dignity. The PR obsessiveness is triggered by money. The higher your PR the more money bloggers can demand for ads, reviews, etc.

I have 2 sites that were hit today… I’m not hurt by this from a profits perspective as PageRank isn’t something I control, so its never been something I included or depended upon in my business model.

However, since I’ve used corporate sponsors to support an Open Source suite for the past 21 months, which I was able to break even with because they wanted the links on my high PR pages in return for sponsoring the software–pages that were burned today by Google–this does have a negative effect and impact on more than just those buying and selling links as I’ll likely be eliminating the Open Source offerings rather than assuming the costs myself now.

I no longer get to offer the free and open wares, the sponsors no longer have the related and targeted audience my site provided, and most importantly lots of end users will no longer have upgrades or support for the applications they’ve enjoyed.

Its not just about the money in every case, and its certainly not about PageRank dignity or web link purity as Google wants us to believe.

Its about market control plain and simple. Google is threatened by social networks which already offer more relevant results than Google’s index on many topics, and losing money to private text link advertising that offers both buyers and sellers a better deal than AdWords/AdSense ever could.

For me the issue isn’t with a changing of some meaningless numbers, but rather the obvious desire and ability of Google to control how others conduct their own business.

Like you Caroline I haven’t got a PR yet. And I also don’t worry about it at this stage. But despite this I can see how it can affect those who have great advertising income streams because of their PR.

These high ranked bloggers might still hold the same value to us as relative newcomers in terms of seeing them as the leaders in the field, but advertisers might see this in a different light as for them the bottom end is what counts = money + traffic.

So if they fear that both will diminish as a result of the PR drop on the blog they sponsored so far, they might pull back which means that blogs who mainly depend on such revenue will loose quite a bit of future revenue.

I can also see some value in Scott’s comment when he states that Google wants to “control how others conduct their business”. To me, this holds some truth as they indeed are threatened and by pulling back PR with the focus on banning paid for text link ads they establish themselves yet again as the almighty god of the online world.

And what really sucks is that we are at their mercy.

Monika

@Andy, If you have a PR5 site with 20 links, and a PR3 with 40k, what does that say about the value of PR? Right now we have a lot of sites / services built on PR but if it continues in this way those will be forced to adjust.

@Lucia, I disagree. Now I am not an SEO but if I put myself in the position of a client and I went to an SEO to get me SE Traffic I would expect traffic. If he came back and said “hey you’re a PR5 now!”, I’d say “Great, no idea what that is, how much traffic do I have?”.

Though I am glad that I’m not an SEO right now!

@Josh, I had no idea that there was any difference. I use a Firefox plugin called SearchStatus that shows a tiny version of the green bar and that is what I assume people are looking at.

@Domtan, Yes there has been talk of Google trying to abandon PR.

@Scott, That is a shame that you have been affected in that way. But I would argue that your sponsors should read this post and ask themselves whether their links on your site are any less valuable now? I doubt it.

Google controls the market right now but only because we let them. If everybody ignored PR and all those businesses that relied on it changed their business models then that control would be gone.

@Monika, If advertisers stop advertising on a site whose PR has dropped out of FEAR, I would say that they also need to read this post and learn how to do proper testing and tracking. The point I am trying to get across here is that people need to focus on the real goal, which is often revenue.

All the stories that are being presented to me in the comments of lost revenue are as a result of somebody else focusing on the PR! Spread the word, educate your advertisers. Ask them to check their traffic before dropping their ads.

This is only to be expected!

Google have stated that they are changing the PR system to something else and over recent months have not had their heart in updating the PR system.

I’m not repeating what the speculations are, or the name of the new system or what it is based on. I think we should wait until it becomes fact version 1.01 (and then get turned upside down in fact version 1.02)

But Google have one job and one job only, and that is to return the most (genuinely) relevant search results. PR has had less and less influence on this for months now. (as we saw with 30dc queue jumping with PR minus 99 sites).

But the problem is, in the BIG league, in the dominiche world, in any commerce based on authority sites, Google PR is how many people gauge the worth of your site.

I’m not even allowed to pitch to write blog reviews unless my site hits certain PR levels. So it’s not just top end stuff. I can’t even earn $30 an article if my site is not a PR x.

There will be MANY paradigm shifts over the new 18 months. Google are not the only player. They may currently be the biggest, but fashions come, fashions go.

Google are reevaluating worth. Every one else was “already” reevaluating worth.

It’s going to be a very exciting time in 2008 with many dynamic changes to the status quo.

I’m so pleased I don’t scavenge for niche markets.

This is the time when the smart money moves to the smart places! And guess where I’m heading off to…

Peter

@Peter, I hope you’re right. At the moment there are far too many people who are hinging so many things on PR. Personally I intend to stay away from such things and try not to get caught up in such nonsense.

Caroline– I agree people want traffic. Post-sale, that’s what they are going to look at.

But pre-sale, customers can’t help but look at publicly available metrics, and the page rank of sites the SEO deals with is visible. That means the SEO is going to have to explain low PR’s away. (Admittedly, I’m speculating. I’m also not an SEO, but I do know that in life, people believe what they think they see. So, PR and Alexa are going to affect SEO’s ability to sell services.)

@Lucia, But that is precisely the problem! If an SEO has clients who are fussing over PR, those clients need to be educated because having a high PR is not going to give them the results that they want.

If what we are seeing here is a sign of Google lessening the importance of PageRank then as Peter says, there will have to be a paradigm shift over the coming months. Those who continue to obsess over PR are going to be left behind and overtaken by those who get on and build their business and their traffic.

Caroline, yep there is :) I use searchstatus and well.

@Caroline: Agreed. My only point is that educating clients is work. It’s work that will have to be done, but… well… there you go!

You are correct that clients who refuse to learn will hire the wrong SEO’s, focus on the wrong thing and not make money. But there is going to be quite a bit of confusion and frustration for SEO’s over the next few months. So, I understand the clamor.

Caroline, you’re absolutely correct that the sponsors in my case would still get the same “real” value for their links in as far as targeted traffic and exposure.

However, not everyone (very few in fact) understand the meaningless nature of PageRank and aren’t interested in having it explained to them, especially from a source who it could appear is just making excuses to keep their advertising dollars rolling in.

I lost 1 sponsor yesterday morning right after this rolled out. He contacted me personally and was apologetic, but his concern was that Google might take this further and also begin penalizing the target sites of links too.

I doubt that will happen, it would lead to competitors manipulating the penalties by purchasing links on behalf of their competition. But, this sponsor is acting in a “better safe than sorry” manner to protect his business and I can’t fault that.

Its not a financial hit for me, the Open Source offerings have just been a break even venture for the past 21 months, but it is sad that we’ll probably eliminate it now because Google made this broad sword strike that impacts others in order to address a problem that Google themselves created.

@Scott, It is a shame you lost a sponsor, there is always going to be a backlash when something like this happens because so many people are stuck in a certain mindset.

For those playing it safe, worrying about lost traffic / penalties / lost revenue, there’s not a lot you can say to them. You can’t control what other people do or think.

Blaming Google is very easy right now but it wont help anything. The best that we can do (and by we, I mean those negatively affected) is to focus on what can be done to recoup lost advertising revenue / sponsors etc.

I am boycotting that search engine and encouraging others to do the same. We have given this search engine power over our websites and we can remove it.

There are many other search engines that return relevant links and specialty search engines for movies, shopping, weather, news and travel. Perhaps this will encourage us to use them.

@CyberCelt, well yep there’s lots of other engines. Personally I like Google so I won’t be joining you there :)