One of the biggest confusions in the world of blogging is whether or not Google PageRank actually does anything. When Google first started using PageRank, it was one of the main factors in their algorithm to order web pages according to relevance, but due to recent algorithm updates to stop spammers, PageRank has been getting devalued more and more every month. Many marketers and bloggers are saying that PageRank is useless while others still check their ranking religiously after each update to see how their numbers changed. The way I see it is this – PageRank is a great benchmark to show off if your site has a high ranking (PR4 or higher), but it’s practically useless in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and has absolutely no effect on revenue earned with Google AdSense or any other advertising company.
How Google Calculates Page Rank
If you haven’t checked it out already, I advise you to check out my wildly popular post on How Google Calculates PageRank. One of the main factors revolves around backlinks which can sometimes be controversial when .edu or .gov, high PageRank, or excessive backlinks are purchased. This is possibly one reason why Google has decided that backlinks are not as important as they once thought. In all honesty, backlinks hardly mean anything. I may link to a website that’s really good, a site that’s mediocre, or a website that I’m making fun of and Google will consider each one of these links equal even though the site I’m making fun of doesn’t deserve my link juice… This is yet another reason why Google may be slowly ditching the backlink concept.
Showing Off High PR
Everybody knows the main reason that PageRank is important is to flaunt it. If you have a PageRank of 6 (and make sure your readers know), you are more likely to gain affiliate sales, quality guest posts, and high-dollar advertising inquiries. PageRank is often seen as a measure of website quality and reliance, so taking a recommendation from a PR6 site seems more reliable than taking a recommendation from a PR0 site. At this point in time (late 2012), this is probably going to be true in most cases, but it appears that Google is slowing depreciating PageRank, so it will be interesting to see which sites remain PR6 a year from now. Having a PageRank of 0 doesn’t necessarily mean the website is unreliable – the site could be new, not have enough backlinks (once again, back to these), or be affected by one of Google’s numerous punishments it puts domain names through for not following the rules.
Another reason high PageRank is important is if you plan on “flipping” or selling the website when you’re finished. Most buyers in markets like Flippa look for high PageRank sites and will normally pay three or four times more money if the website is PR4 verses PR1 or 2. To them, higher PageRank equals higher quality and to you, higher PageRank yields higher profits.
Case Study: PR0 Can Outrank PR7
I am often found talking about my micro niche site called How To Make Lumpia when I’m talking about AdSense revenue and SERP rankings. I have never had the amount of success I have had with How To Make Lumpia and it’s actually kind-of weird, but it’s outranking two quality YouTube videos, a PR6 site, and a PR7 site (see image above). I started How To Make Lumpia in March of 2012 and after it was finished in the “Google Sandbox” and done “Google Dancing”, it settled in the #1 position for the terms “how to make lumpia”. It has been in that #1 position since about May and I get over 1,000 views from the exact search “how to make lumpia” every month. For being a relatively low volume term, I would suspect mostly everybody who searches for it will end up on my site.
What’s so astounding about How To Make Lumpia is that it’s outranking Wiki How, a PR6 site, and All Recpipes, a PR7 site. Both of these websites has equally helpful lumpia recipes, but my little PR0 website is outranking them by several results. I’m not entirely sure how this happened because I haven’t built up any backlinks whatsoever for my site and I’m sure Wiki How and All Recipes have thousands of incoming backlinks (which would be why they are PR6 and 7). Even still, I’m outranking them and I will continue to outrank them as my website traffic and reader base grows.
What Do You Think, Does Google Page Rank Even Matter Anymore?
What do you think about PageRank? With my How To Make Lumpia website, it’s clear to see that PR is not the major factor in Google SERPs. Do you have a low PR site that’s outranking many “expert”, high PR websites? Let us know in the comments!
Page rank is important for people that care about page rank, that tends not to be customers. Page rank is used by advertisers and people who are looking for website links.
From my view page rank has little effect. It appears to be a historic ranking system that google has just not changed. I do believe that it is linked to an old ranking system though I don’t think it carried much weight.
Don’t think PR matters. What matters most is traffic.
Though the PR is an valued concept as far as search engine ranking is concerned. As it defines the probability of your website to get ranked in top 10 searches, but yes there are other factors too that are equally responsible in getting your website’s good rank.
This is true. I also look at PR to determine if a website is reliable or not. For example, a PR6 site is probably more reliable than a PR1 site, but you never know. I probably shouldn’t do this, but it’s a habit.
I have a couple sites that range in PageRank, but I have noticed that it does not seem that PageRank matters all that much when it comes to listing in the SERPs. Now that does not mean that I am going to completely forget about it, but there are just many other things that go into the equation.
That’s how I feel as well. It won’t affect SERPs very much, but it affects the resell price of a website.
Hey Ian,
I have a PR2 blog that outranks some sites with higher PR sites for a certain long term keywords.
PR has to do with ranking but it’s only a very, very small portion of the sum of the determining factors.
great post!
thanks for the share!
Akos
I’m glad that you can back up what I was saying 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Ian,
Does anyone actually know what Google is doing right now. My site does great in a couple of search terms but rubbish in those that I have been targetting constantly. I try to fill my site with great content and quality links but a company that basically fills their site with spam and keywords in my sector seems to do way better despite what Google say about clamping down.
I have no clue. I normally don’t target my search terms and I don’t track them either… I just let what happens happen and my blogs are doing pretty well.
Even some of my posts outrank youtube and other high PR sites, say fast weight loss tips and yoga for hair loss that stand atop ahead of Youtube and other sites. It’s relevancy has certainly decreased, that’s for sure. However, advertisers are still giving it enough importance and you’d get a lot of offers on linkworth and buysellads if you have a higher PR.
Aditya
I agree about having higher offers. Some premium advertisement networks don’t even let you join unless you are PR3 or higher.
Very interesting topic, Ian…
The old Google PR Question, has been a point of contention for many…
Many people have been stressing over it(or lack of it) believing their site, is a complete failure if their PR is not mid range to high(say 5 or above)…..
Google mentioned a little while back that PR is not as relevant as it once was, as an SE ranking factor(to rank well in search results)….
Yet, shortly after, they also said PR does play a roll in how LONG a site will hold that ranking…
So by their definition, a PR1 may outrank a PR 5 site, though, in time the PR5 should out rank the PR 1 site….(other factors would come into it, back link profile, domain age, a few on page off page seo factors….
Site PR may play a roll at the business end of the table….
A high PR site has a higher status….If you see a PR10 site, and a PR 0 site, I think I know which one would get the most kudos…
Also, what Lahaul says about crawl rates seems to be quite true(read a bout this looking into PR a while back)….high PR sites are the apple of Google’s eye….
What Garen says is also ” on the money” !
Many spammers with auto software like to go after sites with a bit of PR, and this also applies to people going from blog to blog making comments…
The truth is, you cannot have a back link profile built of all high PR’S….
There needs to be a particular balance between PR 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 links in a link profile…
Hey Danny,
You make some good points. There is 200 factors Google determines in ranking a site. Yeah a PR 10 which is almost impossible to obtain unless you’re Facebook or Twitter (not sure what their PR is) , but lower ones if not properly updated and maintained will easily sink (cookie cutter sites). This is to combat spam. I do follow what Google says, but then again, I take it with a grain of salt. I have a site 100% whitehat that they have pretty much pushed aside for some reason. Maybe negative seo in which my comp has done. The good thing is it will bounce back as Google takes note of this. Your link profile looks great and you have some dodgy stuff, write them about it and they will help you out. Don’t be scared of Google they are not the FBI, they can really help at times 🙂 But, a good site that people like will really stand the test of time 🙂
Twitter is 10 and Facebook is 9… Just for the record.
Wow, Danny, thanks for leaving such an educated comment! That’s what I love to see 🙂
Anyway, what Lahaul and Garen say is true, but from Garen’s perspective (an owner of a PR5 site), he finds it annoying to have to deal with the spammers. I try not to look at PageRank very often, but it’s habit and I still judge blogs by their rank, despite how high up they were in the Google SERPs.
Maybe within a few years Google will get rid of PageRank completely and we can stop worrying about a silly number!
Ian send me message on Facebook and I will look up any site for you on SEOmoz. I will than be able to tell you if it’s an authority or just a crap site to get a link from. 🙂
No pagerank doesn’t really matter anymore. It just means you will get more spam because people think it magically boost them to top of Google. I got a PR5 site and it seems to crawl the same as it was a 3 or 4.
Haha I like the people that will pay more for PR4 sites. I got one I can sell them 🙂 Might head over to flippa. Got it at some other site for $2,500. The sheep follow each other off the cliff.
Also, backlinks can take quite some time to show up 🙂
Flippa is nice, but you have to have something of high value to sell there. They have upped their fees to make it almost $50 or so just to attempt to sell your website, plus a 10% fee if it sells. I sold a blog on there for $800 once and did the transaction through PayPal so I didn’t have to go through their Escrow service. However, for $2,000, I probably would have been smart enough to pay the Escrow fee.
Yeah I just have a niche on credit repair I don’t really want and haven’t updated in months. Might give Flippa a try. I am kind of interested flipping sites, as I know seo and niche marketing like the back of my hand 🙂
But having a high pagerank can give you an advantage in google crawl rate. In the last pagerank update my new domain got a PR 1. Since then google crawls my site about every 3-4 days. Before that it took about 2-3 weeks to crawl my site. So it is not as useless as it seems.
I never thought about this… Thanks for sharing! My blog gets crawled every 1-2 days.