There are plenty of SEOs out there who say that is a useless metric that was made redundant a long time ago. I disagree, so this is a brief overview of how you can make use of toolbar PageRank despite its shortcomings.
PageRank is fundamentally a Google tool, and because of this it should never be overlooked in terms of what it can tell you about how Google’s perception of websites and insights into how its algorithm actually works. Let’s move this into practical context, because that’s the best place to work without parroting ‘PageRank is a waste of time’ myths.
Ok, so you’re assessing a website to see whether you want to try and get a link from it, or perhaps it’s for sale and you’re considering buying it. You look at the site itself and visit a few pages. The site looks like it’s been updated recently, there’s no spam, there are tons of pages, the content is well-written. First impressions look good. So it’s time to dig a little deeper.
Googling the site name displays 1,200,000 results for the term. Page one of the results is a nice healthy mix of the index page, subfolders, key inner pages and a couple of results towards the bottom from related profiles, including BuySellAds.com. Great, the site has a good Google presence for its brand terms. There are also people buying ads for related terms, so it must be pretty good.
Investigating the site further, we see that it has good Moz scores and a good number of backlinks:
Alexa rank also looks good:
Investigating the backlinks also confirms that this website looks like a good opportunity. There are lots of genuine links to it with good Moz scores. The anchor text distribution could be a bit better, but there’s no cause for concern:
Further searching shows that there are no spam links to the site or any weird-looking anchor text, so we’re all good there.
The WayBack Machine shows that the site dates back to 2007 and it’s been crawled hundreds of times, a great indicator that it’s an aged site. Looking at some of the archives, it’s clear that the site has had the same function over the years with a lot of the same URLs which gives it a strong standing.
And finally, just to confirm, let’s run a rankings check:
This website ranks for a LOT of first page terms, plenty more than shown above, and it’s continuing to climb, so it must be a very good authority website. Ok, the terms themselves aren’t massively competitive, but they are searched-for terms and most of them are only a couple of words in length, so that’s pretty good. We’ve used Google, Alexa, OSE, the Wayback Machine and Ahrefs to judge it, so we’ve got a pretty rounded view of what the site is like. Or have we?
Before you rush off to contact the webmaster or submit your site, let’s take a look at the PageRank:
Oh dear. You’d expect a site with those kinds of Moz scores, links and search rankings to be at the very least a PR4, more like 5. Regardless, this site has obviously been penalised from passing any more juice than if it were a PR0 website. PageRank is the only reliable metric that will tell you if a site has been banned or penalised for passing link juice. The benefit to you for SEO is little to none. In fact, you probably don’t want to be associated with a website that’s been penalised for toolbar PageRank as it’s more than likely it’s been doing something that a) breaks Google’s terms and b) leaves a recognisable footprint or is on Google’s radar for manual penalisation.
Even if an aged site does have a PageRank of some description, it may have been taken down a couple of notches by Google. Cross-reference the PageRank with as many metrics as you can and compare with other websites of a similar level; a lower toolbar PageRank than you’d expect can indicate some penalisation.
I recommend installing some kind of PageRank toolbar plugin for your browser so you don’t have to check sites manually; you can see at a glance how they perform. There are times when sites may fake their PageRank, which can be a big problem, but use other metrics, check the age, and use some common sense. Most fakers are greedy and will often inflate their PR above realistic expectations. If the PageRank is 7 or above and you’ve never heard of the website or company, be extremely suspicious. If the page has obviously spammy tactics and hundreds of paid links, be suspicious. If the site looks relatively new or empty of content or comments, it’s not necessarily a warning sign (but remain cautious) as the domain name could have been dropped or deleted and then picked up by somebody else. After you’ve checked it out and examined the backlinks, try to make sure that the owner is invested in the website and has the time to develop it into a quality resource.
Other uses for PageRank
Dropped domains are another way in which PageRank can come in useful. If you’re thinking about buying a name and wondering how much it’s worth purely on SEO value, PageRank can tell you a lot. In these instances, it’s possible that the site has no results in Google. However, you can still run a PageRank check to see if a domain is worth salvaging or is actually worth more than you originally thought (for example if you were valuing a name based on age or resell value rather than the PR alone). There are also instances when the name may have lost PageRank but the Moz scores haven’t been updated recently or don’t present an accurate picture. Whilst this is rarer, it can still happen.
To summarise
PageRank has its flaws; it’s vague, unpredictable, on average only updated every three months, and not the best metric to judge a website on its own. But that doesn’t mean it should be completely disregarded. Instead, it should be a critical part of your toolkit to explore a website thoroughly before assessing its value. No one metric alone is enough, but between PageRank, Alexa rank, Moz scores, backlinks, the Wayback Machine and of course the SERPs, you can build up a very good picture.
Given that PageRank is the algorithm that Google uses, and that most people use Google’s search engine to search through the Internet, shouldn’t PageRank intuitively be the most important number to look at? It seems foolish to disregard it, especially since Google’s goal is not to rank the most popular websites, but to rank the best websites.
But I’m not in SEO, nor do I know very much about how search engine rankings are computed. But honestly, PageRank is secret, and is not a naive algorithm that can easily be taken advantage of – there is penalization if a site tries to SEO too much. And unless Google publishes their algorithm, which they won’t, then we’ll never know exactly what’s good, won’t we?
Nice post.
To me though it perfectly explains why PR is NOT that important anymore.
Your example shows a site that is performing quite well within all the other metrics you listed.
From that I would conclude that the lack of PR had little or no influence.
Isn’t it the least important metric on your list?
Maybe I missed something?
Regards
Mike
Hi Mike,
Good point. If you’re looking at the site as a potential buyer (and you don’t intend to use it for giving your other sites a boost), then yes, PR is likely to be the least important metric. However if you’re looking to buy a site that passes good juice or you’re thinking about trying to get a link from it, then you’d probably have a very different opinion about the PR/influence.
I have two sites, one is Pr5 and other is Pr2.
The Pr 2 site gets around 80,000 page views a day and ranks for 100s of top keywords. On the other hand, Pr5 site gets around 2000 page views a day and has mediocre ranks,
Now, where would you want your link to be placed?
Based on SEO alone, I’d still go for the PR5
If I was looking for traffic as well, I’d probably go with the 2.
Now that baffles me. I don’t even think toolbar PR correctly represents the page’s true PR or website’s collective strength. You can get 1 Pr8 link and eventually land a nice Pr5 in next update, but to earn 80,000 page views a day, you need to work hard and you need to earn highly trusted and relevant backlinks and maintain over all quality of website and then even if your PR is 2, this one link is going to help your site more in terms of ranks.
The traffic and user engagement on a site is a way bigger metric than PR. I am not denying the importance of PR, but if one has to get a backlink, look for combination of signal. such as domain authority, user engagement, brand penetration, social graph, ranks, traffic etc etc
And having a toolbar penalty where your PR drops from PR8 to Pr5 while your traffic and ranks continue to increase doesn’t necessarily means it is a bad link.
Getting a backlink based on PR could mean buying a shiny car with poor ring piston, bad wiring and what not. If PR is really dear to some SEO’s they should make sure the site is authoritative enough, relevant and not suffering from panda penguin or any other xyz updates.
Links must be earned from authoritative and relevant sites and that should be the criteria, not the PR.
‘Now that baffles me. I don’t even think toolbar PR correctly represents the page’s true PR or website’s collective strength. You can get 1 Pr8 link and eventually land a nice Pr5 in next update, but to earn 80,000 page views a day, you need to work hard and you need to earn highly trusted and relevant backlinks and maintain over all quality of website and then even if your PR is 2, this one link is going to help your site more in terms of ranks.’
It really depends on a few different factors, including the purpose of your website (for example if you’re looking to attract advertisers who look at PR – and there are a worrying amount of them – the 5 will obviously make the difference in terms of what you get paid). When you’re looking at getting links from other websites purely for SEO reasons, you’re looking at how much juice they can give you (toolbar PR with SEOmoz metrics thrown in for confirmation/comparison). Their own rankings are a secondary factor – more useful if they are in the same niche as you for comparison purposes, but generally not as indicative, especially, as the article shows, sites that rank well and have lots of visitors don’t necessarily pass much juice.
In terms of secondary effects, yes, with 80,000 page views/day (or, for example, 10% of them getting passed on to you from the original site), you’ll likely attract a lot of natural links, which is great. You’re still going to reach a saturation point in terms of rankings, especially if you’re working in a highly competitive area.
‘The traffic and user engagement on a site is a way bigger metric than PR. I am not denying the importance of PR, but if one has to get a backlink, look for combination of signal. such as domain authority, user engagement, brand penetration, social graph, ranks, traffic etc etc’
Yep, that’s what I covered above. I’m in no way suggesting you should use ANY metric alone, you just can’t get an accurate picture.
‘And having a toolbar penalty where your PR drops from PR8 to Pr5 while your traffic and ranks continue to increase doesn’t necessarily means it is a bad link.’
I agree, it’s just not as good a link as it should be, so you’re not getting the most return for your effort (and there’s always the worry that it could drop further).
‘Getting a backlink based on PR could mean buying a shiny car with poor ring piston, bad wiring and what not. If PR is really dear to some SEO’s they should make sure the site is authoritative enough, relevant and not suffering from panda penguin or any other xyz updates.’
Again, this ties in with the danger of basing things on one metric. I think that would make a good topic for a blog post, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to cover that at some point.
‘Links must be earned from authoritative and relevant sites and that should be the criteria, not the PR.’
I think they’re all factors. Personally, I would always favour higher PR over relevancy though
It really depends on a few different factors, including the purpose of your website (for example if you’re looking to attract advertisers who look at PR – and there are a worrying amount of them – the 5 will obviously make the difference in terms of what you get paid).
True, people buy PR and that is not a good strategy.
Yep, that’s what I covered above. I’m in no way suggesting you should use ANY metric alone, you just can’t get an accurate picture.
I know you understand that, but you are still biased towards PR. Toolbar PR is old school SEO.
I think they’re all factors. Personally, I would always favour higher PR over relevancy though
You are contradicting your own self. While you admit that you need to take account of 10s of other factors prior to getting a link, yet at the end you again show your bias towards PR. I cannot stress more, domain authority, relevance, social graph, ranks, brand penetration are the things to look for, unless you are package based link builder who is selling PR to web owners.
The whole point of the blog post is to highlight the fact that PR has a use as one of many metrics because too many people write it off completely. Similarly, writing blog posts about any other single metric (as I have done in the past) would imply that I’m biased towards those on an individual basis too – I’m not. As I’ve said throughout, using any one metric (or any limited number of metrics) is a bad idea. That’s why I cover a range of different metrics in the post – they all have their limitations, and they should all be considered together to create an overall picture. The entire concept of the post is based around not eliminating/ignoring a specific factor, and in this case I chose PR because it is commonly advised that people ignore it.
‘You are contradicting your own self.’
I’m not, because they are all factors – just not of equal weighting. It also depends on what perspective you’re looking at it from, as per my comment above about whether or not rankings of a site you’re trying to get a link from are more important/relevant/influential than other factors. Relevancy in particular is something I’m intending to write a post about when I get a chance because it’s extremely overrated compared to other factors in the same way that PR is often ignored.