Oct
So it’s official now, the Google Page Rank has been updated. However, the controversies are far from settled over issues like:
- Is Page Rank important in any way?
- Has Page Rank algorithm been modified?
SO, IS PAGE RANK IMPORTANT IN ANY WAY?
This debate has been going on for years now, and neither side is willing to budge. There is the first group that says Page Rank is useless and it doesn’t prove anything. Then there’s another group that says Page Rank is a major ranking algorithm. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
The Page Rank you see in the Google toolbar is like a picture of the real Page Rank taken once every 3 months (approximately, it is not a fixed date). The Real Page Rank is updated constantly by Google and it is like a measurement of your site’s importance. It is actually a link analysis of your website, and that’s what, in my opinion, makes it pretty important.
So for instance if you have a webpage, its PR will depend on the Page Rank that its inbound links will bring. Each inbound link will bring you a PR equal to the PR of the page that links to you divided by the number of outbound links that particular page has. I hope it isn’t very confusing, but let’s assume you get a backlink from a page that has a PR of 1. If that particular page has 9 more other outbound links, this means that you will get approximately 0.1 amount of Page Rank. Besides all this, there is also the damping factor, which is set at 0.85. So the PR of a page has the formula:
PR = 0.15 + 0.85*n
Where “n” is the sum of all the Page Rank amounts brought by inbound links as explained above. So, each new page starts with a PR of 0.15.
SO WHAT’S DIFFERENT NOW?
Well, to be perfectly honest, this is unclear yet. However, what we can rely upon are facts and those are:
- Yahoo got from a PR of 10 to a PR of 9;
- Youtube got from a PR of 8 to a PR of 3 !
- Even different regional Google homepages got from a PR of 8 to a PR of 7 like google.se (
However, the conspiracy theories regarding the demise of copyblogger.com didn’t come true in the end, as the PR of 4 was just an intermediary phase prior to the update, and Copyblogger now has a PR of 7 (after having a PR of 6). This is also what happened to reputable sites like ezinearticles.com which had NO PR yesterday.
THE ALL FAMOUS CLICHÉ: PR DOESN’T MATTER, TRAFFIC DOES
This phrase, taken in absolute value, is true. However, it’s like owning a street shop and saying: “I don’t care how my front windows look like, all I care about is customers walking into the store.” – when it’s obvious that how your front windows look affects how many potential customers walk into your store. Same with PR, since it’s still obvious that Page Rank is still a solid ranking algorithm. After all, Page Rank is the most important link relationship algorithm and this is what set Google apart from all the other search engines. This is an important factor in its success. Why would years of research and lots of money spent in the process be simply thrown down the drain?
Tags: Page Rank
