Is Googles PageRank value dead? What’s the weight of actual PR?
Author: Joe Whyte
One of the most highly debated topics on the web is the value of PR (PageRank). One of the most heated arguments is how much influence PR has on your rankings. As the Google Algorithm changes opinions have changed at the actual weight placed on PR and its corolation to helping sites rank.
From what I have seen, experienced and read the importance of PR in ranking has dropped considerably from a few years ago and Googler Matt Cutts has given evidence that PR is one of MANY factors that go into deciding a sites ranking now. There are many factors that help decide ranking besides PR and Rand from SEOMoz put together a pretty intense list of potential ranking factors that I stand behind %100.
Jeremy Zawondy has claimed that PageRank is dead. Many other professional see an overwhelming misplaced importance placed on the TOOLBAR PR and I can see contextual advertising abuse happening all over the web. PageRank has it’s value and the most important thing web users and internet marketers can do is to educate themselves on this value.
An interview with Andy Steggles of SitePRTracker talks with Mike McDonald from WebProNews about the importance of PageRank in relation to the value placed on ranking. I thought this was a pretty educational interview and a good jump off point for lunarpages readers to start digging into this more. If anyone has questions or comments about this I am really excited to hear what you think!
December 13th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
It’s dead to me *dramatic sigh
OMG WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET THIS BLOG A PR?!!!
*cry
December 13th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Matt Cutts just said recently that there will not be an update for december but who knows. I checked http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.html and depending on what cycle our blog was launched we should be coming up for some soon ;-)
December 27th, 2006 at 5:47 am
The rumour I’ve seen on a lot of webmaster forums is that the next PR update will be in mid Jan 2007. As for the question is PR dead? I’d say it isn’t as alive as it once was (diplomatic). People are beginning to realise that PR only has a value when it comes to selling advertising space on your site – it doesn’t have too much of an influence on search engine results. At the end of the day it is always traditional SEO techniques that increase your standing in the search engines and bring more visitors (hopefully paying customers) to your site.