Google PR (PageRank) Defined

[sub-zero]

PR is short for PageRank, a system Google created to help determine the popularity of a site. It's essentially what put them on the map, as it made their search results (at the time) FAR FAR better than any other search engine, because it knew which sites were more popular and it put them toward the top.

Here is what they say about it:
http://www.google.com/technology/

You can download the Google toolbar and see the PR for any site. The more incoming links a site has, the higher the PR. The higher the PR, the better that site will do in the search engines. Granted, many other factors go into search engine rankings, but PR is a pretty big one.

For reference:

- The scale goes from 0 - 10
- Most people say an 8 isn't possible for a one-man show. You need to be a big company to get the links necessary (hundreds of thousands) to get that high.
- There are just a few PR 10's in the world.
- The scale is exponential, like the Richter Scale. There are 1/10th as many PR5s as there are PR4s. There are 1/10th as many PR6s as PR5s. Etc...
- The ONLY thing that affects PageRank is incoming links and the quality of those links. A link coming to you from a PR5 is much more valuable than a link coming to you from a PR3. Of course, every link helps so never turn them down.
- An easy way to get more incoming links is to get your site listed in directories. There are a lot of paid directories out there, but that Excel list is all free ones. The list shows the PR of the sites as well, which really helps.
- If you post on other forums, and if they allow it, make sure you have a link to your site in your signature. Those are links, they pass PR, it helps.

One last thing to consider, which you often have very little control over is anchor text. The text that is used to link to your site is very important to Google. If people link to your site with the words "Smallville forum", you'll rank better for those words. If they link to your site saying "Swiss cheese", you'll rank better for those.

[zach]

nice article, an interesting read.

I am not sure what "Excel list" you are referring to..?

[sub-zero]

You know, I think that was a list that was either emailed to me or that I emailed to someone at one point who asked me for this info. I saved this article because I think it is good info and I refer back to it often, but I can't remember what that is right now. I will search and see if I can find that list and if so, I will post it in here so that we have a list of directory listing services as well.

[Harry4265]

Yes great article, i like it!

[zach]

Thanks for posting it. I love the "for reference" section. I suppose that it was a list of directories. There are probably loads of them on the net. I do have a question though:

This is about PAID directories in particular: Does google penalize you if you are obviously listed in a paid directory? If you got PR from being in a paid directory, that's basically paying for links, and I THINK that goes against their Terms and Conditions.. I'm not sure. I do know that the paid link business is very very big. Is there an easy way for google to figure out whether its a natural link or a paid link?

[vicki2]

>>One last thing to consider, which you often have very little control over is anchor text. The text that is used to link to your site is very important to Google. If people link to your site with the words "Smallville forum", you'll rank better for those words. If they link to your site saying "Swiss cheese", you'll rank better for those.[/QUOTE]


Can you explain a little more about 'anchor text'? I'm not quite certain I'm following and it sounds important!

[zach]

Quote:

vicki2 Wrote:>>One last thing to consider, which you often have very little control over is anchor text. The text that is used to link to your site is very important to Google. If people link to your site with the words "Smallville forum", you'll rank better for those words. If they link to your site saying "Swiss cheese", you'll rank better for those.

Can you explain a little more about 'anchor text'? I'm not quite certain I'm following and it sounds important!

He means the text that makes up the link. like in this example: Domain Forum, "Domain Forum is the anchor text.

[sub-zero]

zach Wrote:Thanks for posting it. I love the "for reference" section. I suppose that it was a list of directories. There are probably loads of them on the net. I do have a question though:

This is about PAID directories in particular: Does google penalize you if you are obviously listed in a paid directory? If you got PR from being in a paid directory, that's basically paying for links, and I THINK that goes against their Terms and Conditions.. I'm not sure. I do know that the paid link business is very very big. Is there an easy way for google to figure out whether its a natural link or a paid link?

No, to my knowledge, Google has no idea if you paid for the link or not, unless it is an obvious Paid Directory ONLY, and even then I don't know why they would care.

The thing I have heard is that TOO MANY links can hurt your ranking. In other words, if a directory site has 500 links on it, it isn't as strong as a site that has only 10 links on it. The rule of thumb is that you should not have more than 12 links on a site, for the links to be worth anything. That is why alot of these sites who sell links will say "only 4 spots left" because they are doing you a favor by limiting the links they have on their site.

The more linkbacks you have out there, the better, even from a directory site, but I really don't think those will help your PR at all.

[zach]

sub-zero Wrote:No, to my knowledge, Google has no idea if you paid for the link or not, unless it is an obvious Paid Directory ONLY, and even then I don't know why they would care.

In the past, Google has blocked sites which try to artficially increase their search engine rankings. If you hired a dodgy SEO firm, you need to write to Google in order to get your site relisted, and even that can take months. I am not sure what their policy is towards paid links specificall, but their general policy is definatly against 'abuse' of their ranking system. So PRESUMABLY they would be against people paying for links in order to increase their Page Rank..

sub-zero Wrote:The rule of thumb is that you should not have more than 12 links on a site, for the links to be worth anything

Thanks for pointing that out sub-zero! Now that you mention it, there are a few paid directory sites with hundreds of links per page on them. And some of these cost in the hundreds of dollars per month for a listing! What a rip off!

It sounds like google is simply dividing the Page Rank by the number of links on the page, or something like that, and your total Page Rank is then the sum of all incoming Page Rank links.

Obviously, the best solution (and probably the only legitimate solution in google's eyes) is to have people link naturally to your websites because of their interest content. Then you basically have a good site and good ratings (the way the Page Rank algorithm was supposed to work).

[sub-zero]

zach Wrote:In the past, Google has blocked sites which try to artficially increase their search engine rankings. If you hired a dodgy SEO firm, you need to write to Google in order to get your site relisted, and even that can take months. I am not sure what their policy is towards paid links specificall, but their general policy is definatly against 'abuse' of their ranking system. So PRESUMABLY they would be against people paying for links in order to increase their Page Rank..

I can see your point here, but what I meant was paid links on a site that wasn't a directory services. If a site only lists 10-12 links on their page, which they sell to other users, I don't see how this could effect Google to say that they won't validate this link.