PageRank Update?

SEO Crowd: "Hey there's a PageRank update!!!"
Me: "Like I care!"

hehehehe... yeah, okay so it's always amusing to see the freak out and the absolute fascination with PageRank. God forbid someone's rank drops...

All for a digit between 1 and ten... but what about that grey bar?!

Anyhow... we'll see the outcries later this week no doubt.

PageRank Update!!!

Like I care...

hehehehe...

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the PageRank craze. It looks like Google have run out another PageRank update. So far it would seem that many of our sites have seen a bump up in PageRank, and none come down as of yet. Guess from a cosmetic view I'm doing something right.

Paid/Sold Links

Links… aren’t we all a little tired about hearing about links? Don’t link to bad neighbourhoods, don’t link to link farms… don’t get links from bad neighbourhoods; don’t get links from link farms. Don’t buy links. Don’t sell links. Don’t have too many links on one page. Don’t let all the links pointing to your website have the same anchor text.

Actually that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But I think we should go back to the beginning of all of the fuss. PageRank (my pet hate) seems to have started this. A long time ago Google (I’ll assume the other search engines figured this out too) learned that many webmasters were sneakily modifying their websites to gain high rankings. So they reverted to the voice of the people. By counting links and more importantly the text within those links they felt they could better rank a web page. The problem with this is that for some reason they decided to release the Google Toolbar with the PageRank value in it. This surely changed SEO forever. Well done Google, take a bow. *note the sarcasm* While they won’t let us in on any of their algorithm they will happily allocate out a very random value for the uneducated to obsess over.

So armed with a few green pixels, usually a few more than another website, webmasters suddenly had a tangible commodity to offer other webmasters. After all, everybody wants to rank highly on Google, don’t they? So if I have a website that is ranked 7/10 by Google surely that is worth selling a piece of? So that’s exactly what webmasters did. It’s a standard marketing tactic. If I have a publication that’s seen to have some worth, be it number of subscribers or area of distribution, then the space on my publication is seen to be valuable. Eventually that’s exactly what webmasters were doing. Selling a piece of Google worth became a thriving business. It was more than just SEO which is something you sell someone based on an idea and projected results. This was something you could actually see.

This was suddenly a major headache for Google who realised that yet again their system was being gamed by sharp webmasters/brokers and other advertising agents. So then we had the announcement that paid links were bad. But how would Google know that links were paid? Well they seemed to think that the algorithm could recognise that external links near the word sponsor or paid or even ads were paid links and discounted those links. Again, great announcement to webmasters everywhere as they removed these statements off of their websites.

I have to point out that at this point I don’t see what the problem is. If someone has a high valued website then surely selling advertising on these pages should be standard practice. More often than not these links were marked as being sponsors. This added prestige to these links as well as clearly informing visitors that these were sponsored links. The fact that the search engines didn’t like this practice… oh well, so be it.

So right about now Google came out with their own standard, breaking every W3C law out there by adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link tag. As the search engine could no longer tell the difference between paid and legitimate links Google insisted that the webmasters flag these links. Great going Google! Was this a public admission that the googlebot just wasn’t able to tell the difference? So now webmasters had to either mark their links so that the algorithm would recognise it as a link to discount (because it wasn’t valid – despite being a genuine sponsor) or they would have to hide the link in a script of some kind (usually Java Script).

But as not all webmasters are honest this wasn’t going to be a foolproof plan. So Google did the next thing they could think of, as webmasters to report paid links. This turned any webmaster into a possible snitch. Great for the very ethical Google, right? After all, why would you let someone get away with cheating you? Then again if it’s not hurting traffic/rankings then why not just copy what the offending webmaster is doing?

Google started visibly lowering the Toolbar PageRank that was visible to the masses on the websites that were identified as link sellers, threatening many others with a similar penalty. However it is worth while noting that rankings haven’t been affected by these toolbar changes. I guess the ranking algorithm doesn’t work off of the same algorithm as the PageRank one does. Who really knows? Matt Cutts? Right now, I wouldn’t bet on that.

So it comes back down to a simple decision, do you buy/sell links or not. If you buy links for the sole purpose of increasing PageRank then expect a penalty. If you sell links watch out for a penalty.

However it surely is very difficult to truly monitor this one. Some would argue that relevant links would carry more weight and that non related links won’t be counted as they would be seen as possible paid links. But then it would be unfair for someone who is usually an SEO blogger to not be able to pass on any link strength to a website that sells a gadget that the blogger finds useful – even if it’s not SEO related?

What this all boils down to is one simple thing. Google created a PageRank monster which fed off of all of these links. Yet again we see a perfectly normal tactic used the past become branded black hat simply because the big boy(s) doesn’t like it. While we watch the success of paid links and other shady SEO techniques you can’t help but wonder what Google (and let’s not forget the other search engines) will try next to keep the internet a free and fair space.

I would say, Keep watching this space. I think things are due for a big shake-up in the near future. When this does happen the paid links hysteria may seem like a storm in a teacup.

PageRank the next Y2K?

PageRank… or is it really just a few green pixels? Every so often we hear of a new PR update and the craze that follows it. Has this addiction finally reached a pinnacle or has the worst yet to come? I shudder to think.

Funny enough, the name PageRank has little to do with actual web pages. The name is derived from Google founder and developer Larry Page, hence the name Page-Rank.

PageRank is defined by Google as: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

This translates into a democratic internet where the sites with more links are deemed more important, but that links from these important sites are deemed to be more important too.

I am sure that anyone who has an email listed somewhere in cyberspace has had a link request that has included the: …please put a link to our site on a PR2+ page. Possibly the most concerning is that nobody really knows what the PageRank of any page truly is, so how can anyone really verify this? With the current PageRank updates coming out so very slowly, about 4 times a year, how would a young website ever be able to compete with an established website?

Most web users, with the Google Toolbar installed, assume that PageRank goes from one to ten. This is little more than a very (and I do mean VERY) rough guide as to the popularity of the page. In this case the 1 really represents something silly like 0.000001 and the 10 virtually immeasurable. This all remains very subjective to the number of pages and the number of links on indexed pages and which of them Google gives weight to or ranks highly. As you can tell quite quickly, that value of 1 to 10 really could represent anything.

Now I say it: I’m so very much over this PageRank craze!

Okay, now that that has been said. Links are important. Links are possibly the most important attribute when trying to rank a webpage for a particular search term. You need only have a look back upon all the Link Bombs from the past to see that by simply adding links to a site you can rank it for virtually any search phrase. The terms find chuck norris and miserable failure come to mind. It must be said however that while many of these tactics do work, they often don’t last for very long.

PageRank is indeed a very valuable concern when trying to rank for competitive phrases. And as the PageRank description points out that the more links the better, the more popular the website sending the link even better still. But I think we can all appreciate that the true nature of this recipe is as closely guarded as the Coca-Cola or KFC recipe – perhaps even more so.

But perhaps it is the next level of the PageRank that really makes the most difference – Trust Rank. As mentioned before PageRank is calculated by the number of incoming links and from which site these links are from. A newly created website has little weight when it comes to casting a “vote” to another website. A site that has been online and active for the past 5-10 years would pass a lot more weight along. Usually you will see that these older sites do indeed have a good few green pixels in that toolbar. But possibly the most important factor here would be the age and traffic Google themselves have passed on over time. This would go some way to establishing trust. If Google has never blacklisted a URL and it has remained active and current throughout all those years then perhaps it is very much trusted. This TrustRank could indeed prove to be the real PageRank over time.

While it may be difficult to evaluate the true trust value of a website, especially a new website, there are a few tell tale signs to look out for:

• Look for a security certificate; this is usually a good sign that someone else has already done the fine-tooth comb job for you.


• Check the websites back links. Remember trust is often created by links themselves; these links will indirectly be linking you to the rest of the internet.


• Check for indexed pages; this is where the green pixels do come in handy, if it has a visible PageRank then chances are that Google has ranked the page. It never hurts to use the site:www.domain-here.com command.

These are normally the easiest ways to establish the authenticity of website.

Links are very important in speeding up the indexing process to any new website as the more links that are incoming the more likely Google will notice your website. The weight of those links are more important than bulk. After all a site that has a high Trust Rank will pass on more weight to another page than a page that has 1000 links from spam websites.

As for right now, I believe that little green bar to be nothing but a big hoax as it is out dated, rarely updated and so far pretty meaningless, I wouldn’t give it any more credit than the Y2K bug. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google were to announce that its PageRank toolbar is little more than smoke and mirrors. If so, Larry Page is surely a better illusionist than David Copperfield.

SEO in a Nutshell

SEO in a Nutshell... an optimised website aimed at pleasing the search engines to gain the best possible placing in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)for relevant and often searched words and phrases.

Go on, read that again...

According to Wikipedia:
(SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the higher a site's "page rank" (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

Okay firstly never confuse that "page rank" with PageRank. Confused already? Don't worry, if you hear of anyone talking of PageRank (named after Larry Page Google co-founder) just ignore them. The only one who knows the true PageRank of any page (yes each page of a website gets its own PageRank) is the Googlebot. What is important is your position in the SERP's, to a degree.

As the search engines continue to try to provide the best possible (read most relevant) search results to each visitor, many searches using the same phrases may actually result in different results. This is usually due to geo-location, after all, if I were looking for my nearest fish and chip shop I would hope the search engine realises that I'm searching for a fish and chip shop in Westville, South Africa. Google have done a fantastic job with this by pretty much offering every country out there their very own version of Google. Often the searcher won't even realise that they are being routed to Google.co.za or Google.co.uk instead of Google.com. All 3 of those will return different results for the same search. It is now possible and quite probable that searches in the same country will return different results.

Enter SEO. While the goal remains to rank well and be found. The difficult part is ranking well for often searched terms that will actually lead to conversion. This means that the website needs to not only rank well but actually generate traffic that will eventually result in a sale, lead, sign up... or what ever the purpose of your website may be. With this in mind 10 converting visitors from 100 in total is better than 1 converting visitor from 1000 visitors. Quality is more important than the quantity of traffic.

Redefined: SEO is the practice of generating quality traffic to a website to increase business.