9 replies to this topic

[eww]

i just visited a site i had made for somebody (well over a year ago) for the first time in months.

this guy does not advertise in magazines, internet or even tell his friends. he does nothing. (i know this, because i'm an acquaintance)..

so basically... the only links he has posted towards his site are exchanges I submitted him to, long long ago. (at most, maybe 20 total).

anyways, he has a PR of 4
one of my sites (which i advertise A LOT!! in link exchanges, guestbooks, etc. - anything i can get my hands on!) has a PR of 4 as well. the site in question has a gigantic amount of links towards in, internal links and information related to its' content within its pages...

how? how does a site with minimal traffic - compared to a site that has over a few thousand unique hits a day get the same PR?

this just throws all of my theories of how PR works out the window.

by the looks of things, PR is made by hand, whomever decides they like a site, assigns a PR to it.
if this were the case, they'd assign a high PR to sites like google.com or ebay just to throw us off.

am i nuts?

[eww]

here's another theory i came across tonight:


1 site as an example:
had a PR of 5 (highest average for NON-commercial sites i've ever seen)...
they linked to all MAJOR WEBSITES in their genre (ebay, main music news site, etc..) ---- they had no indie/small/etc websites linked, whatsoever. just ebay, amazon, bla, bla...


seems ludicrous. but why does the website that links to STRICTLY major music chains have a better PR than someone that has physically WORKED for their pr (and exchanges with similar sites)? (link exchanges, word of mouth, etc)... the INDIE site usually has tiny websites linked. (beginners, noobs, bla).. but the site with a crystal clear PR has virtually NO outgoing links?



i cannot edit my posts for some reason, so if i have reposted something, that's not my fault.

[wizardsandwars]

It's nearly impossible to understand PR, mainly because google doesn't want you to. They update PR very slowly (2 or 3 times per year), and they change the rules quickly and constantly.

I wouldn't worry aobut it. Worry more about content and inbound links with your key phrases in the anchored text, and remember, the days of free traffic from search engines is limited, so start building your paid advertising campaign strategy now.

[Jack_mcs]

eww, on Oct 3 2005, 12:53 AM, said:

how? how does a site with minimal traffic - compared to a site that has over a few thousand unique hits a day get the same PR?

this just throws all of my theories of how PR works out the window.

by the looks of things, PR is made by hand, whomever decides they like a site, assigns a PR to it.
if this were the case, they'd assign a high PR to sites like google.com or ebay just to throw us off.

PR is strictly a measurement of the number of links (and the quality of those links) to your site. How busy a site is has nothing to do with it and it means little in the overall scheme of SEO.

Jack

[misterbling]

Jack_mcs, on Oct 3 2005, 06:46 AM, said:

PR is strictly a measurement of the number of links (and the quality of those links) to your site. How busy a site is has nothing to do with it and it means little in the overall scheme of SEO.

Jack

That's exactly right. I hate it when people act like it's a mystery to newbies. Think of google as a popularity contest, translating anchor text in links and the amount/quality of them into results.

Mystery and nobody knows... well lets try a simple test try searching google for "failure" you'll see the GOP and DNC manipulating results with google bombs (tons of anchored text links) Notice sites have nothing to do with that word. People are in the know and manipulate google all day long.

[eww]

Quote

That's exactly right. I hate it when people act like it's a mystery to newbies. Think of google as a popularity contest, translating anchor text in links and the amount/quality of them into results.

that's exactly my point. nobody links to this site! it isn't even listed in dmoz.
the overally quality (information range) is very limited as well

[Jack_mcs]

No, you're missing the point. If a page has PR, there are links to it. You may not be able to see those links though. Google has stated they do not list them all, presumably so that others cannot figure out what they are doing.

Jack

[eww]

the stats state otherwise. if these pages linked to the site are important enough to get him a pagerank, he isn't getting very many hits from the sites google doesn't show.
he's lucky if he gets 10 unique hits a day

[Jack_mcs]

What do the number of hits from site have to do with anything? All that matters is that the links exist. If you put a link to your home page in the footer of your site (which you should), this will count as a link to your home page for every page on your site. You may never click that link - makes no difference. The link exists and is counted towards your PR. This is one of the reasons PR doesn't mean much. It can be manipulated in such ways and google knows it.

Jack

[GraphicsGuy]

From Google Help Center's expalnation of Page Rank:

Quote

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Hits are not a part of their equation. Just the number of inbound links weighted by the PR of the page the inbound link is coming from.