Comments on: Why Toolbar PageRank is Worthless

By: Bill Rowland

Bill Rowland — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:07:38 +0000

Ian,
Thanks for a good post. I recently encountered a Google PageRank Toolbar situation and the weaknesses you describe were all part of the problem.
Simplifying the value of a webpage is much easier said than done and many online businesses don’t have time for sifting through grey when they want “black and white.”

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 05:46:08 +0000

It’s a funny little thing that page rank. For a while we made it of such importance, that now that we are telling clients not to weigh so heavily on it, they look at us like we are crazy. There are so many more factors out there that dictate the success of your website, and page rank has just fallen to the wayside. More importantly is how relevant your site is, is it a site that people are flocking to, sharing your information, or is it an e-commerce site that people are shopping from, are you a site that converts? Those are factors that weigh more than your page rank. It’s true, that little green bar doesn’t really mean much.

By: Etienne Beneke

Etienne Beneke — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:21:22 +0000

Love this post thanx. One tends to “forget” that that little green bar is not a true reflection of anything. Once you are in the bad habit of scanning for website’s PR bar its difficult to kick it…

By: Corey McMahon

Corey McMahon — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:49:26 +0000

I agree 100%. – however I don’t see the industry’s obsession with PageRank going anywhere soon. The concept is far too easily explained and just loosely correlated enough to be dangerous. It’s the age old problem of correlated Vs. causation (ie: “well, Microsoft has a PR of 9 and they rank well so it MUST be a ranking factor…”)

By: Brandon

Brandon — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:10:20 +0000

About your first point, yeah it may be imperfect but check out the highest PageRank scoring websites online. Now check out the PageRank of new sites, and then check out the PageRank of medium sites. What you see will match the truth. It may not be perfectly spot on, but it’s close enough, I feel.
And about your third point, PageRank ignores on-site factors and doesn’t tell you anything about relevancy, yes, but it was never supposed to. I mean, that’s like knocking relevancy because it doesn’t take into account site authority. Well, yeah, but it’s not supposed to.
Don’t you think you’re being just a tad bit hard on poor little PageRank? :)

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 07:59:51 +0000

Whatever Steve Reubel says… do the opposite ;)

By: Carly

Carly — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:16:49 +0000

Good points about page rank. It’s ok to use it as an indicator of the authority of a site rather than its relevance as you pointed out. For the relevance we would use the other metrics you suggested and look at the quality of the backlink profile.