Google’s Pagerank, every webmaster who made more out of it, knows something about it. The links on pages everywhere on the internet, form the chains that connect the pages together. Now the Pagerank is a system developed by Google to qualify the importance of a page on the internet. This is determined with the amount of links towards that specific page.
Photo by existentist
The Pagerank of the page that links towards the specific page, is also taken into consideration. And exactly that is what lots of people think the main problem is. As many enthousiastic webmasters try to get links to their own webpages on big (and high Pagerank-) pages, large amounts of money are taken into account.
Google ‘took care’ of this problem by punishing websites that put paid links online, links that are paid for. Many websites were decreased in Pagerank and this caused a lot of buzz on the internet.
Is the Pagerank necessary?
I personally don’t think so. The Pagerank seems to be taken into consideration, within the order of the search results. This makes it harder for websites with a low Pagerank to score high on certain keywords, which are already populated by high Pageranked websites.
This makes the amount of links more important, than the relevance of the page. Off course, the relevance will be more important, but the influence of the Pagerank shouldn’t be forgotten. On second, it makes it harder for pages of new websites, to get high in the search results, since those pages won’t receive a rank at first. It takes some time for Googles Pagerank to calculate the Pagerank.
Is it up to a search engine, to determine what pages are the most important?
Yes, I do think that it’s up to a search engine to determine what pages are the most ‘important’ to the internet, for as long as you can tell what’s important on a big scaled network like the internet. But not in the way they are doing right now.
Perhaps the people at Google should think about improving their system, or develop a system that gives all pages the same opportunity to score on certain keywords. It’s all about the relevance of the pages!
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Personally I think Pagerank is useless. I dont think people care anymore since the one day you might have pr5 and the next day it would be pr0 again. And then just a while and you have a pr2 again. Its like a rollercoaster.
True, Google should be more consistent with punishments or rewards for higher Pageranks. The frequent (large) changes make the Pagerank to a less credible number
If I read you correctly you are saying that links (I assume backlinks) are more important than relevance. Secondly you note that Pageranks makes it more difficult for new websites to get high ranking. You conclude that it is not about pagerank but about relevance.
I think that the reality is much more complex than you are describing here.
Sais in simplistic terms, if you look for subject X, a search engine may provide the webpage:
–> with relevant content about subject X;
–> with backlinks from pages about subject x;
–> with anchortext that relates to subject x;
–> preferably from authority of hubpages about subject X;
–> etcetera
I am not certain if this is a great system. I do know that search engines keep changing and try to look more at the relationship between words and the context in which these words are mentioned.
IN the end these are only ways to improve the relevance of the pages provided to the users. Relevance of the search result is in my view the end result of the whole process not one of the factors that should be taken into account to determine whether a page is relevant for the visitor.
What I was trying to tell, that getting a higher Pagerank (and higher in the search results) is simply calculated to the amount of links towards that page.
The order of the search results should be determined by relevance of the pages, not because of a number like the Pagerank.
In my view, the order of the SERP is already determined by relevance.
Relevance is among others determined by topical similarity, keywords, content of a page and the amount of backlinks (votes for that page).
There is no single number that determines your ranking.
Rereading your article, could it be that you focus on the difficulty for new pages to beat older pages due to lack of backlinks?
haha, replies to comments in the threaded system are getting smaller and smaller. Nice system to keep threaded discussion under control. At some point there will be no room left for another reply
Exactly what I mean oeroek, perhaps I should consider re-writing this article.
The comments thread untill level three, to maintain space for the comment!
I would not re-write the article. This one is about PR and already published.
Maybe it would be interesting to write a new one and go deeper into the issue. You could then focus on the difficulties a new webpage with fantastic content can have to gain a proper ranking. New (better quality) content may loose from old (medium quality) because of somebody getting a set of good backlinks years ago.
@esvl
Are you talking toolbar PR or current PR. As far as I know it is not possible to show the current PR of a webpage.
No it is not visible, only the Toolbar-Pagerank (as we know it) is visible to us.
exactly, not sure what PR esvl is referring to. Visible toolbar PR is useless for ranking in the SERP. it may help with getting backlinks and ads though.
I am talking about current PR.
Okay, so you mean the real PR, not the PR presented by (for example) the Google Toolbar?
That PR definitely has some affect to the search results.
Yes. I did not know there is a difference though.
You’re current Pagerank is most likely not the same as the Pagerank is, as it’s shown in the Google Toolbar. Google stores you’re Pagerank on its server(s) and once in a while (once in the 4 months or so) they update all Toolbars.