Mild-mannered webmaster by day …
Today is one of those days when I feel like throwing up my hands in despair, banging my head on a desk and finding a new career in the fast food industry.
Can someone please explain to me why my husband’s blog has a PageRank of 5? I’ve checked it 15 different ways, and every time it comes back the same. He wrote four posts in March 2007 and hasn’t touched the blog since. It has a grand total of 55 inbound links, according to Yahoo! Site Explorer, and 52 of those come from being listed on two blogrolls (including mine).
Meanwhile, I’ve been slogging away at my company’s new website for almost a year now, and I’ve been stuck at a PageRank of 3 the entire time. I’m starting to wonder if PageRank is real, or if Google spits out a random number every three months just to torture us. Are hundreds of engineers in Mountain View snickering as we speak?
I’ve been re-reading Danny Sullivan’s detailed explanation of PageRank to see if perhaps I missed something. I’ve also re-read Google’s explanation as well. But everything I’m reading contradicts what’s happening here.
If PageRank truly interprets links as votes, then how does a personal blog with so few votes — votes of mediocre quality, mind you — get such a high PageRank?
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20 Responses for "Is PageRank a Myth?"
Hahaha, that is funny! Maybe because it’s hosted on wordpress? i bet that has something to do with it. Smashing Mag posted a good article on PageRank.
(summary of article)
I think PR is put together by elves at the North Pole. Even more important is that I don’t think PR is really all that important. People like to see a good PR because it gives you something to strive for but other that that it has no impact on your search results.
*laughing* Great tone in your article… you will hate to hear that Bloglyne has a PR4 and well… I really have no idea why.
I just figure if I keep increasing my links, and original content, eventually Google will “do right” by me… but it is kinda like sticking an icepick into your eye slowly with them, eh?
I know, I know, PageRank doesn’t matter. But doesn’t it FEEL like it matters? Just maybe a little tiny bit?
/sigh
its a subdomain of wordpress. easy pr5 right there.
but pr is useless anyway
Maybe just a bit.
You should not be caring about Toolbar PageRank anyway. It doesn’t affect your rankings in the search results.
Yeah, Michael, that’s what I hear. And you shouldn’t care how people rate your picture on Hot or Not, because it’s your inner beauty that really matters.
The point is this: If PageRank really works the way everyone (including Google) says it works, then why is this happening? I find it hard to believe that Google hands out bonus PageRank to anyone who signs up for a free Wordpress blog.
The only real use for Page Rank is as a indicator of how often Google is likely to crawl your site, all thinks being equal.
You’re on target there Nashville.
PR is pretty much pointless. Plenty of good sites have low PR.
Its hard to do but in general I do my best to ignore PR…turn of that little green bar, its not worth obsessing over.
IMO, a more accurate way to see how Google views a site is to check keyword positions that a site is trying to rank for. Not sure what keywords his blog was trying to rank for but thats how I try to evaluate a site.
Wow! That is weird! But I agree with the guys above. Pagerank is more hype than anything else. But still, we can’t take our eyes of it.
Nice blog. I think most people get blinkered about page rank and its importance and go chasing it and worrying about if its going to go up or down on the next update.
Bottom line is that SERP`s are king and you should focus all your efforts on that.
PageRank is too often fixated upon by those who believe that more PageRank is the answer to their traffic needs. A higher PageRank is only successful at drawing more traffic after it goes over 6, which is almost impossible for the average website/blog.
Page Rank is still a good indicator if is combined with backlinks quantity and quality analysis. Regarding your websites mentioned above, I’ve seen similar things for other websites. There is always a logical explanation but we are missing it sometimes.
I think its drop to PR 3 already.
I wish my blog could have a PR3. I had a PR4 and then I went to 0. Now I can just wait for some miracle.
IMO Google favors WordPress.com in terms of PageRank. I have a blog there with 10 posts and I have make 20 links pointing to the blog and the next PR update - bam - PR4
Maybe Google listened to you - his blog is now pagerank 3 with the recent update
I have seen some weird results like that before, where a page seems to be a 5 instead of a 3 for example that I couldn’t figure out either, but not often (and they have usually reduced at the next update).
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