You may have noticed that my last post on Google’s shot against sponsored links was centrally focused on Page Rank. Lots of people consider Page Rank to be a little out of style when it comes to SEO. The reason is that Google either de-valued PR or increased the value of other factors a few years ago. Add in some filters that prevent the passing of PR from some pages to others and it feels like PR doesn’t matter as much as it used to.
While I agree that it has been de-valued, it remains a significant factor. It all matters. The focus on the Page Rank specifically as of late is because that seems to be where most of the play is happening with the new Google attack on sponsored links.
Of particular interest though, if Google is successful in properly de-valuing the links that they feel are threatening the integrity of their rankings, they are likely to increase the value of Page Rank. It will likely never have as strong an effect as it once had but we still may see a resurgence in the weight that PR carries in determining the SERPs.
If you’ve been neglecting PR growth in favour of other SEO strategies, you may want to blow the dust off your old PR manual and see what you can do to crank yours up. Not only is it currently relevant, it will only become stronger as we move forward.
Page Rank, SEO
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11 responses so far ↓
1 Stefanie // Nov 9, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I’ve never considered PR to be valuable for anything but two purposes: (1) To make money, given that so many advertisers value it and (2) as a very general indicator/report card from Google on your overall link-building progress.
2 Marc // Nov 10, 2007 at 4:32 pm
You’re not the only one who shares that sentiment Stephanie, but in my experience it still carries significant SEO weight. Certainly not to the degree it once did, not by a long shot. But it still counts.
3 beth // Nov 10, 2007 at 5:24 pm
My PR dropped from PR5 to PR3 yesterday. Since I do PPP its very significant!
The PR checker I use (BlogFlux) still says its PR5. But when I saw it had gone down on PPP I went back and checked PRChecker and it was at PR3.
Have you ever heard of two different PR checkers giving different results?
It has really put a dent in what I can earn at PPP!
4 helen // Nov 11, 2007 at 9:51 am
Marc, I’ve been thinking. There is no way big G can tell which are paid contents. Sure, we link, but then most if not all bloggers do put up relevant links on their post regardless they are paid or not.
PPP is the only paid post company that requires bloggers to put in a script inside their template. You’re more knowledgeable in this field.. do you think that would make it easy for Google to sniff out who’s writing for PPP?
It’s easy for big G to look for the embedded script, right?
5 Marc // Nov 11, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Beth: Mine did too. What’s likely happening with the variation in your case is that they are each looking at different data sources for PR.
When Google’s shifting things around, it takes a long time for changes to propagate through all the data centres. For now, I’m going to sit tight and wait for things to settle down.
I’ve seen my PR drop before during a shift and it came right back. Though Google’s not recognizing a significant number of backlinks that it used to. Again though, I think the wait and see approach is the best one for now.
Helen: There are a lot of ways that Google can tell which links are paid. Google has a global picture so while they might not be able to figure it out by just looking at your website, by backtracking from the sponsor, they can identify all the links that showed up on a particular day that looked out of the ordinary.
As for the PPP code, that’s what people refer to as a footprint. PPP uses a great big ugly footprint
They’ll use the footprint along with the link patterns to sniff us out if they see us as a real problem. Ultimately, they’re the ones with the power from most people’s perspectives. Their machine knows more about the web than most people can even imagine. Oh yeah and they earn a living through identifying patterns 
Ultimately if the business plan involves fooling Google, it’s not going to be a long-lived plan. This is the time frame I’ve been waiting for. What will PPP’s response be? It looks like Argus can help in this area, but we’ll have to wait and see. If PPP has a successful response, then we all keep making money, everybody wins. If they don’t, people like me and you will end up abandoning the program and everybody loses. While I have alternative plans for revenue generation post PPP, the problems of today lie in Ted Murphy’s hands.
6 Marc // Nov 11, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Ok… Scratch that. I’ve been away from the web for a while and wasn’t aware of the recent round of Google kick in the pants for ads.
PR drops for people who sell links is very real. Time to wait for PPP’s response. Bad time for them to be out on the road.
7 Charlie // Nov 11, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I have to agree. Good article. Keep it up
8 James // Nov 12, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I always refer to it as a Fools Bar.
9 Marc // Nov 13, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Fool’s bar it may be, but it amounts to dollars and cents for people like me
10 Josh // Nov 15, 2007 at 6:25 pm
I think PR remains important as well. My guess is Google still uses it when determining how many pages a site has listed in their regular index and how many go into supplemental.
11 Marc // Nov 16, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I haven’t been keeping close enough attention with regards to the supplemental theory, but it certainly is possible.