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Time to wake up the Pagerank Orgy is over

25. Oct 2007 | 17 Comments

Google dished out a somewhat interesting Pagerank update today hitting a lot of major sites (known fo selling links & participating in Blog Networks) with negative update values (i.e. a Pagerank Decrease).

Some of the more notable decreases:

  1. Problogger - 6 to 4
  2. John Chow - 6 to 4
  3. Washington Times - 7 to 5
  4. Forbes - 7 to 5
  5. Engadget -7 to 5

The list goes on really. But you know what? I don’t care & you shouldn’t care either.

I’ve said before that basing your Business Model around something that you don’t entirely understand isn’t sound.

Yet many people still do.

You only have to look at the Buy & Sell section or the Google section over at the Digital Point forums to see how obsessed some people are with Pagerank. Me? It wouldn’t bother me if they removed it at all really.

A perfect example, would you rather get a PR6 Link on a PR6 page with no backlinks to it, or a PR6 with over 2,000 backlinks? This is part of the reason that Pagerank is flawed. Since it filters down through a site from the homepage it is possible to get high internal pages with PR that have little or no backlinks to them at all. Yet people will buy links on these pages, I wont.

You see, I’ve always based my intrinsic value of sites on more than a simple Green bar. What actually does that Green Bar even represent?

Webmasters need to wake up & start caring more about measureable metrics like:

  1. Overall Website Backlinks
  2. Page Backlinks
  3. Backlink Weight (i.e. how many backlinks does the page you have a link from have)
  4. Traffic
  5. ROI & Overall Profit
  6. CPA
  7. Bounce Rate

These are metrics that will not only increase your profitability but they are also part of a Sound Business Model, get that right & you will not only have a profitable website but a sustainable one too.

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17 Comments on "Time to wake up the Pagerank Orgy is over"

Matt Larson 25. Oct 2007, 12:35 pm

Let’s throw “profit” into those metrics. I’ve seen affiliate marketers obsess over ROI to the point they forget about volume and leave a ton of cash on the table.

Stuart 25. Oct 2007, 12:44 pm

Good point Matt, I guess it also depends entirely on your budget :)

John 25. Oct 2007, 1:03 pm

Even though PageRank isn’t useful for ranking sites anymore it will, in my opinion, still be a powerful tool as long as everyone values it highly.

For example, everyone checks for a fake PR before buying a link or a site. Not a whole lot of people check for a fake PR when exchanging links.

I think it might have a slight effect on less savvy users in online sales. (similar to the stupid hackersafe button, that doesn’t really make a site “hackersafe”) The higher the PR, the more secure the user feels buying things from that site.

TheMadHat 25. Oct 2007, 2:19 pm

@John - I think anyone who knows what they’re doing have not payed attention to PR in a long time. Agreed that it probably has some magical spell on regular consumers and I also agree on the “hacker safe” logo. Hacker safe…whatever. Pay them a grand and you’re hacker safe :)

I’m glad the page rank nonsense is crashing. Websites will be valued on actual value instead of a secret magic green bar.

Kate 25. Oct 2007, 5:47 pm

Do you have an advice on how to check a single subpage (not domain) on this point

3) Backlink Weight (i.e. how many backlinks does the page you have a link from have)

?

Stuart 25. Oct 2007, 5:49 pm

Kate, grab the SEO for Firefox tool then search for the page in google i.e. http://www.earnersblog.com/pagerank-orgy/ (make sure to leave out the http).

Then with the tool turned on click Page Links & it’ll show you there.

Cheers!

Mark 25. Oct 2007, 11:15 pm

It’s this kind of sense that allows you to make money. Let the noobs at DP pull each others hair out about PR. More fool them.

zaaylo 26. Oct 2007, 3:49 pm

my thinking google can not throw out PR technology straight away lots of business is having PR Technology base. G will Improve it at much better way.

make money online 30. Oct 2007, 12:58 am

I dont really care about pr. What is important is traffic.

Best Make Money at Home Jobs 30. Oct 2007, 11:37 pm

Page rank is important to me. I need all the free traffic I can get. I have no budget at this time for Awords or such. I have to rely on backlinks from articles, blogs, forums and social networking sites to get the backlinks for my PR. If Pr gets me on the first page of Google, I’m willing to do what it takes.

TheMadHat 31. Oct 2007, 10:23 pm

PR doesn’t get you on the first page or Google, or get you any traffic, or sprinkle green fairy dust on all the ladies. It gives you a little green bar that means absolutely nothing to you or me. Up, down, whatever. Do your SEO like it’s supposed to be done and the traffic and rankings will come.

Stephan Miller 02. Nov 2007, 4:39 am

Hasn’t pagerank always been nothing. I have statistics. I compete with my stats from last month. Not anyone else.

Amit Nyamtabad 09. Nov 2007, 4:46 am

Really Pagerank has only been one of the parameters to sell links on your site !

In other words it is Public Relation for Google.

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