It looks like there is a serious update of the Google PR at present. Since earlier today reports of new page ranks (PR) have been subject of discussion. Of course the update does not happen instantly across all data centres, so it is not that strange to find some people reporting a higher PR than others for the same site.
The burning question for many though is whether PR is as important as it once was.
According to Google PR is:
ageRank 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.”
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
The idea behind PR being that a page’s importance is related to the company it keeps.
However this transparency has led to a lot of abuse, with people overtly selling text links on sites based on the site’s PR.
A number of my sites have finally been assigned a page rank, while others have seen their page rank shift, both up and down.
Did you fair well from the PR update mneylon? Any chance we could see some samples of sites with a new PR level. I am trying to get some SEO advice through practical examples so some hands on viewing would be great.
What do you do to SEO the hosting company you work for? it seems to have a good PR!
Well done
Rootkit – thank you for your comment
This site increased its PR by 1 to 5
Browse.ie seems to have gone from 0 to 4 (new site)
http://www.linuxmall.co.uk has come in with a PR of 4 as well (inner pages 3)
http://www.irishisptest.com came in with 4 as well
Quite respectable 🙂
With regards to our own site, although I still do some work on it, we have been working very closely with the site’s developers who are also very good with SEO. I’d recommend them 🙂
There is only so much on page optimization that you can do (without reverting to blackhat techniques) which can work quite well 😉
So essentially this company must be building links for you, perhaps even by buying them for you. how do you feel about this? I think there are only so many reciprocal links you can get and SEO friendly dirs you can apply to.
Thanks mneylon
Rootkit
Nobody is building links for us or buying links for us. Sorry to disappoint you 🙂
Michele
quote:”There is only so much on page optimization that you can do (without reverting to blackhat techniques) which can work quite well”
not quite true. you don’t need blackhat, and using it is not advised. there are many simple things you can do, but the most useful is to actually work the website, to build a community and get the community working for you. people have to stop thinking of it as being solely about seo tricks and more about proper website development and management
Of course you dont Need blackhat. It is an option that can work and does work in some cases. “Using it is not advised” – Depends on what you are trying to achieve, competition levels and what you have at stake. It fits some situations better than others.
I agree with the community – it is essential for any website to function successfully. However this is not a part on page SEO – more site/community development. We are building neylon’s here by posting these comments – but this wont help him get good SERP results in comparison with a few well placed alt and title tags. Matter of fact Sir.
I would consider editing alt tags with useful information good web design practise/dev rather than “seo tricks”