Has PageRank Become as “Important” as Alexa Rankings?
This is Jerry West, guest blogging again from the SEO Revolution. Let’s talk about the recent PageRank update which started last Thursday and has the SEO/Webmaster community freaking out as usual. Fine. I know you have “Green Bar Addiction” but can’t seem to attend the weekly meeting to rid yourself of the control it has over you.
At least allow me to settle your nerves.
There’s a few SEOs out there who look at testing data from real websites and I’m one of them. First, let me clear up some possible misconceptions of the PageRank update.
1) Google only updates the PageRank number on their toolbar for the public to see about four times a year.
2) When the Toolbar PageRank is updated, it is based on old data, often 10-45 days old from when the update hits. Look at it as your would a stock quote online. You see the “Stock Quote Delayed 20 Minutes” message … and it is the same with PageRank. You don’t see the actual value as that would give you an unfair advantage and Google doesn’t want that, so they “delay” as well, but it is “days or weeks” instead of “minutes”.
3) Google continually calculates PageRank and ranks sites based on their complex algorithm. However, these PageRank numbers are for Google’s eyes only. We never see them (see above).
4) Google often downgrades the visible PageRank for sites who typically sell PageRank (link brokers and their partners). However, the actual PageRank is not effected. So traffic levels stay the same and rankings, but revenue from selling links obviously takes a hit.
So what do we learn from the above? Well, we know the PageRank data when it updates is old and it is often inaccurate.
So with this recent update, I was quite shocked. Of the nearly 600 domains I track, one-third of them had a PageRank 3 or better. This is how they fared in the update:
Before: PR 5.4
After: PR 3.1
That’s a 40% drop. Ouch. And what is even more concerning is the level in which drops and increases happened. Many are saying the “bar has been raised”, meaning, there are more pages, thus, Google has to shift the grades in order to account for the influx of new pages. After all, they did this last year. The problem is, Google has FEWER pages indexed today than they did last year, so reason would be that couldn’t be the issue. But I dug a little deeper…
I had quite a few sites which have 20,000+ backlinks and listed as PR5 before the update get downgraded to a PR4, yet I had a few dozen sites who went from a PR3 to a PR4 with less than 500 backlinks. Now, honestly, how is that possible? So I dug deeper…
I tracked the sites back 10 weeks and analyzed the traffic and rankings. Virtually no significant change. I also looked at the sites who experienced an increase, and again, no significant change upward in traffic or rankings.
In discussing these findings with Jason Katzenback, he said, “Looks like PageRank is about as important as Alexa ranking.” Bingo.
If PageRank was a significant factor, you would have seen changes in the sites who had their PageRank taken up a point or down a point. It’s been trackable in the past. So why not now? Either PageRank is no longer a factor or Google is getting more aggressive in penalizing sites with their Toolbar PageRank.
I’m speaking on the Organic Panel at Search Engine Strategies next month in San Jose, and you can bet I’ll be asking a lot of “why” questions to the engineers from Google.
So, to wrap this up, if your PageRank went down, but your traffic didn’t, relax. Keep marketing your business and follow trusted advice. And if you’re ready for a real big step, uninstall your Google Toolbar and ignore that “green bar” fluctuation. You might be surprised how much more you get accomplished without the “PageRank Distraction”.
Read More on the last Google PageRank Update.
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