Facts and Fictions Behind Google PageRank (PR)

Many of my clients obsess over the importance of link partners having a higher Google PR in order for their site to rank higher. There have been a few instances where I have walked my clients through the uninstall process for the Google toolbar so they would stop focusing on PR so much.

This article covers facts and fiction about Google PageRank (PR). After reading this article you should have a fairly good understanding of why PR is beneficial, why it isn’t and I’ll even throw in instructions on where to get the Google Toolbar, enable or disable the PR feature on the toolbar and provide you with a few quality PR checking sites and PR predicting sites.

True & False

“The higher my sites PR, the higher I rank in Google”
“Exchanging links with a site that has a high PR helps my rankings”
“I should only link to sites with PR of 3 or higher”
“Each individual page has a unique PR”
“PR is based off of IBL (In Bound Links)”

The higher my sites PR, the higher I rank in Google

FALSE!

PR does not play a significant role in WHERE your site ranks in Google. PR is a measurement process that assigns a numeric value between 0 – 10 based on the IBL’s that the spiders crawled in order to get to your site.

Exchanging links with a site that has a high PR helps my rankings

FALSE!

PR equates out to the frequency that GoogleBot spiders your site. A site with a higher PR will receive more attention from GoogleBot and as this spider follows links on that site, it will crawl right over to your site as it follows links.

The easier your link is to find on a link partners site from the originating point that GoogleBot starts a crawl, the more often your site will be crawled from that partners site.

I should only link to sites with PR of 3 or higher

FALSE!

There are a few reasons why this practice will be similar to shooting yourself in the foot. Take http://www.articlesender.com for example. It has been registered for approximately six months and already has a PR 6 for the home page. Five months ago this probably wasn’t the case, it most likely hadn’t been through a PR update, which generally happens every three or so months. If you rejected an opportunity to link to this site early on before it had established what it has now then you really have shot yourself in the foot.

Remember, when your building IBL, you should always look at the site and not just PR. If the site is new and has potential in your opinion, it might be worth getting in on the ground floor (PR 0 – 3) and riding it out with that site.

Each individual page has a unique PR

TRUE!

Googlebot (and other spiders) don’t go directly to the beginning and start from there. No, in fact, if you have a link on someone’s site that goes to your about page then the spider will start at your about page. This means that your about page will receive its own separate PR.

This is good to keep in mind because if you take the time to build internal PR within your site by building IBL to individual pages of your site, then the spiders will crawl more often and you will be able to target more keywords by focusing separate pages on various topics that are keyword focused.

PR is based off of IBL (In Bound Links)

TRUE! & FALSE!

Let’s face it, if it was that simple then all people would need to do is work on establishing thousands of links and be done with it. Thankfully Google doesn’t just establish PR based off of QUANTITY. Yes PR is based off of IBL but it is also based off of the QUALITY of the IBL.

A good read would be http://www.google.com/technology/ but the part that will relate to PR & Quality is below.

“Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.”

Conclusion

PR is not to be obsessed over. It is but ONE factor of maybe 100.
PR is useful in increasing spider activity and has very little to do with the end result of your site ranking better.
Quality over Quantity IBL is going to have a bigger impact on your PR.

Checking My PR

You can either download the toolbar and set the options to show PageRank Display or you can use various sites offering page rank checking.

To Install Google Toolbar
http://toolbar.google.com

PageRank Checking Services

http://www.prchecker.info/
http://pr.blogflux.com/
http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php <-- Multiple at Once.

PageRank Predictor

http://www.rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction <-- Multiple at Once.
http://www.way2seo.com/tools/prerank/

To Uninstall the Google Toolbar

Step 1: Go to your Start button. This is typically at the bottom left hand corner of your screen.

Step 2: Find and click on your Control Panel.

Step 3: Click on Add / Remove Programs and wait for the list to populate with the programs found on your computer.

Step 4: Locate ‘Google Toolbar’ and remove it.

NOTE: I do not suggest removing any programs from your computer. Doing so is on your sole decision. While uninstalling Google Toolbar shouldn’t cause any negative effects on the way your computer functions or search settings, I cannot predict any possible problems.

Written by John Jones, an active search engine optimization expert with The Seo Fox.