Why PageRank Doesn't Matter

Why Google PageRank Doesn't Matter

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What is PageRank (PR)?

Google's pagerank is a measure created by Google of a sites trustworthiness in the eyes of Google.

It is important to realise that PageRank applies to each individual page on a site & is not a sitewide value. One page can be PR 5 and another could have no PR.

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".

That is why you'll hear search engine professionals talking about how a single link from an authority (high PR) site can be worth more than lots of links for a low PR site.

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What? Two Versions?

Google has two versions of PageRank, a publically displayed metric and an internal value that they do not release to the public.

The public version is only updated once every 3 months or so (there's even rumours that it only gets updated once a year).

Therefore the public toolbar PR is almost always out of date by up to 3 months.

That's reason #1 why your PR doesn't matter.

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Rankings & PageRank

It is well known in the search marketing industry that good (high) pagerank doesn't equate to good (high) rankings. A PR 0 site can easily outrank a PR4 or PR5 site (and above).

Therefore concentrating on building PageRank in the hope that it will automatically convert into higher rankings for your keyphrases is a waste of time.

That's reason #2 why PR doesn't matter.

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Pagerank alone doesn't pay the bills, it doesn't generate enquiries, sales or conversions. A little green bar will never make your business or website a success, no matter how optimistic you are.

A great site with a PR0 doesn't make it a bad site. It may be a new site, have had recent server problems (downtime) or the toolbar itself may be reporting bad data.

As has been said many times before, concentrate on building quality content that people will want to share with others & build your inbound links to get rankings that bring traffic, the PageRank will follow ... but if it doesn't ... so what?!!?!

PS. You don't just have to take my word for it, most SEO experts agree on this. Here, and here and even here.