As I’m not deeply into SEO and such, I kept mum when the hullabaloo over the see-sawing of Google’s PageRank system washed over the blogosphere late last month. This blog — after having been pinned with a PR4 from 0 in May — suddenly went one notch down, and then back up again after a few days, and then is now at PR2. Same thing happened with my IT talks! blog.
Ang Dabawenyo suffered one point, after landing a PR5 in just 3 months of existence in May. Mindanao Bloggers enjoyed the same leap from 0 to 5 as my I-love-Davao blog, in just as many months from site launch. The Davao Blogspace is still at PR4.
What’s curious is Google’s ranking of the DVO Bloggers Network blog, which runs on Google Apps. It’s fairly new (started only in 6 July 2007), and it doesn’t have very many incoming links, and still has only a few feed subscribers — probably because the posts are erratic and far between. But it got a PR4 from scratch.
I’ve often heard bloggers and SEO practitioners speak of PageRank in almost hushed tones, like it was the Holy Grail. Perhaps in some ways it is. Bloggers all over the world covet it. Furthermore, nobody outside of Google knows exactly what algorithms or heuristics are employed to determine a website’s PR value. And that’s probably what propagated the mystery and all its attendant allure and fascination.
In my opinion, PageRank is highly arbitrary. The statement by Matt Cutts, Google’s go-to guy on SEO issues, confirmed it for me. He said, “The partial update to visible PageRank … was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.”
Google used to be the new kid on the block. Has it now turned into a bully…? Apparently, the people at Google dislike paid links. I won’t pretend to understand why, but I believe it has something to do with “gaming” the search engine. I don’t mean to sound simple, but, what has the Big G got to do with my decision to sell links on my blog? (By the way, Blogie Blog and my info-tech blog do not have paid links, but Ang Dabawenyo does. Go figure!)
In my opinion, what should matter to bloggers is his or her content and how it’s being received by readers and subscribers. Are the readers leaving comments or trackbacks? Are they subscribing to feeds? To probloggers especially, what should be more critical is not PageRank but actual site traffic.
So, is a low PR value bad for your blog’s public relations? I admit, to those who put too much of a premium on artificial metrics, your blog might appear ‘unimportant’ if it had a low ranking. But to those who see your content for its true value, at the end of the day, PageRank is just a number.
2:00 pm on 6 Nov 2007
*nose-bleed*
hehehe… for me… page rank should not be taken seriously by bloggers, webmasters, etc.. Even if your PR is 1, or 0, but your content is priceless, people won’t bother to check your page rank first before reading your blog content, ayytT??? hehehe…
4:44 pm on 6 Nov 2007
Google have many data centers on which google kept its data for faster processng regional wise , Before that update , We have seen last month Oct-07 google update PR and Back links on Data centeres turn wise , During that moment unpreditable results would be come out .Link PR be 0 which has 5 or greater PR . So I think what you measure because of that reason .
Keep in touch for another query
11:15 am on 10 Nov 2007
i dunno why there is a discovery such as page rank. for what?
my page rank value is 3. so what?
hahahhahaha!
11:21 am on 30 Nov 2007
PR is useless , im sure of it .. there is no sense talking about anyore ..