Why Google Page Rank is Pointless

If you own a website, have visited any webmaster/computer related forums or blogs or you have the Google toolbar installed, then you’ve probably heard of or come across something called Page Rank (or PR as it is abbreviated). PR is something that continuously seems to generate a huge amount of discussion in online communities – a little green bar, invented by Google – as a method of identifying the quality of a specific web page.

I decided to write this article for two main reasons.

Firstly because I used to be one of those people who chased PR; I thought that PR was the ultimate target and prize for every website I ran and owned. In reality however (and many, many, many hours of wasted time later) I truly realised that I had given this somewhat pointless grading system a lot more thought and attention than I ever should have!

The second reason for writing and clarifying my own opinion on the subject was because of the stupidity displayed by one particular person some months ago on a discussion forum that I frequent. The member in question (who shall go unnamed) joined the forum and professed to being a knowledgeable SEO expert. Needless to say, one thread and many posts later and due to his lack of real knowledge pertaining to PR (and other SEO issues), the user caused quite a considerable amount of confusion, specifically with new and non-tech minded forum members.

Page Rank Definition

Google definition is that:

“Page Rank 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".

Suddenly feeling rather lost, confused and overwhelmed?

In the simplest of terms:

“Google Page Rank is the name given to the method of ranking pages according to a number of factors such as link popularity”.

This potentially and theoretically means that the larger the number of websites linking to a website or web page, the higher the Page Rank value should be. Of course Google has refined its algorithms numerous times (both to improve results but also to combat misuse) so the overall result obtained is now a combination of a number of different, varied values that relate to the website in question – essentially though PR is based on linkage.

If you really want to go even deeper into the complex algorithm of Google Page Rank, there are various formula distributed across the web specifying the exact equation on how to accurately calculate Page Rank based on the various, variable factors.

What is Page Rank used for?

As mentioned, PR is a method of showing a websites importance according to Google algorithm. This really doesn’t mean anything to a website visitor, in fact the majority of website visitors are unlikely to even be aware that PR exists. So why is PR important and why is it such as highly discussed topic in webmaster/computer arenas?

Essentially the answer is buying and selling links.

One of the methods of increasing PR (and ultimately increasing your ranking in the Google search engine) is to increase the number of websites linking to the site you wish to promote. By generating links to your site you identify to Google (and in fact other search engines that use similar principles of ranking) that your website is important. If you therefore work on the principle that PR is the method of identifying websites that are important (on a scale of 1 to 10) then by getting websites with higher PR to link to your website, you potentially generate stronger backlinks and hence increase your chances of improving rankings.

It’s quite a sound theory until you realise that visual Page Rank isn’t quite as accurate as people would have you believe.

The Principles of Page Rank (and how people get it wrong)

So how does Page Rank work, and how do people get it wrong?

Returning to my second reason for creating this article, the person who ‘lacked the knowledge’ believed that he owned a website that had managed to achieve a PR3 rank in just a few, mere days. This inaccuracy highlights two very important aspects of Page Rank – visibility and time.

When we talk about the visual PR a website has, we can either gain this information from viewing a website or web page with the Google toolbar installed or via various online tools or website widgets. Visual Page Rank is essentially what we as users can physically see; a value between 0 and 10 to identify the importance that Google gives to a specific page.

This ‘visual Page Rank’ is not updated on a regular basis – in fact visual Page Rank is only updated roughly ever 3 months! Google simply takes a snapshot at a specific period of time (prior to the update) and uses these new values to update the visual Page Rank that we can physically see.

So where does this snapshot (or export as it is also known) of Page Rank come from?

We’ve already discuss the concept of visual Page Rank as something we can see once ever 3 months however the reality of Page Rank is that it is actually changing on a much more regular basis – in fact its suggested that Page Rank could be changing as regularly as ever day however the nature of Google and the Page Rank system is that we, as front end users of the Google Page Rank system cannot see these changes.

By realising that the PR we can see isn’t a live indication of the real PR of a website means that just because a website has been assigned a PR3 rank in the most recent toolbar export, doesn’t mean that the site in question still retains this rank – for all we know Google may have modified its algorithm (even penalised the site in question) and the visual PR has (in real time) been lost.

This therefore identifies a very real mistake and misconception that many inexperienced people have – that a website or web page can achieve a PR3 ranking within a few days or in fact a few weeks. Of course there is no denying that a website that is a few days or weeks old could obtain a PR rating however until an export occurs any comments regarding the actual PR of the site are purely speculation.

The Key Points of Page Rank

PR is Google’s method of identifying a web pages’ importance
PR can be seen via the Google Toolbar or various other online tools or widgets
PR is ultimately generated based on the number of backlinks to a website
Visual PR is updated approximately every 3 months
Visual PR is a snapshot, taken at a specific period of time
Because visual PR is a snapshot taken at a specific point in time, the PR we actually see is likely to be completely out of date
PR changes all the time however we (as front end users) cannot see PR changes until a PR export occurs

In summary, Google’s Page Rank system is an excellent method of identifying good quality websites at a specific point in time (i.e. when the snapshot occurs) however as the PR data we see in visual form is out of date it really doesn’t provide a very good indication of the real strength or importance that Google assigns to the web page in question.

What Do You Think?

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