92 replies to this topic

[bwelford]

I liked your thought, peter_d, that the Guidelines page is an extremely effective filter for its cost.

Thinking in the reverse way, I think displaying the PageRank in the Toolbar has only negative effects in encouraging some of the Bad Guys to make money by persuading the naive to link to their high PR sites. It's fine for Google to use PageRank in their algorithm if it helps with relevancy. However I cannot think of any strong reasons for displaying this one element of their algorithm, while being incredibly secretive about all the other elements of their algorithm.

If you could never see PageRank then you would have to decide whether to link to other sites on the basis of value to your human visitors. Nor would you know whether your "backlink" activities were worth the effort or not, since you wouldn't know what PageRank had been achieved. It seems to me it would be a much saner world.

[qwerty]

I completely agree, Barry. The SEs know it would harm the relevance of their results to make every aspect of their algos public, so what is the point of Google revealing a piece of it? They gain nothing by having people obsess over it and try to affect it.

[OldWelshGuy]

Now i know i am going to make myself look an arse here but.. why change the habit of a lifetime?

If a PR8 links to you, am i right in assuming that it does not matter what keywords that page has built its pr upon, the value of its pr would be transferred (I know it is diluted etc)

What i am saying is, if i have a website that is tops for chalk and all things chalk with a pr8, and i link to a website on cheese and all things cheese, then even though they are content wise as far apart as ? well chalk and cheese really, will the pr be affected?

If this is the case, then it shouldn't be too hard to tear down the walls of errant pr transfer, should it?

[OldWelshGuy]

Qwerty

They gain nothing by having people obsess over it and try to affect it.

Bob, there is only one thing worse than being talked about, NOT being talked about. (Oscar Wilde) long dead poet dude

Google got major league word of mouth promotion and awareness as a result of this act, so maybe that was their only motivation, to get people playing again.

[qwerty]

Regarding the "cheese/chalk" issue, does anyone have a link to that patent application involving link relevance?

And yes, OWG, they got plenty of attention letting us glimpse the wonder of PR and go nutso over it. Maybe now it's time to get attention by taking it away because we as a group have become PR crazy.

[Scottie]

patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?...TOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,526,440.WKU.&OS=PN/6,526,440&RS=PN/6,526,440

[SEOCub]

Could you fix that link? It does not work.

[Jill]

Hmm...I tried to fix it but can't quite do it. I'll leave it for Scottie, cuz I'm not sure what the actual link is.

[Jill]

What i am saying is, if i have a website that is tops for chalk and all things chalk with a pr8, and i link to a website on cheese and all things cheese, then even though they are content wise as far apart as ? well chalk and cheese really, will the pr be affected?

Really a topic for another discussion, but yes, PageRank only, has nothing to do with relevance. It's a sheer numbers game. They leave that up to the other parts of the algorithm.

Jill

[mcanerin]

Yes, it's kind of confusing.

I have several smaller clients that I link to on my website. Naturally they are from several different areas (medical, real estate, etc)

Imagine my surprise when, out of interest/boredom, I clicked on the "Related Links" button for my site and found out I was in the catagory of real estate/whitewater rafting/t-shirts/automobiles !

Not exactly tightly focused....

Ian

[schecky]

Really a topic for another discussion, but yes, PageRank only, has nothing to do with relevance. It's a sheer numbers game. They leave that up to the other parts of the algorithm.

Jill

Ageed Jill, however the text in the links is in the relevancy algo as demonstrated by sites that you can't find many of the words in the term on the page, title or any of the usual suspects. When you look at the sites the links are coming from they are often also being driven by linking campaigns where relevancy to a topic (and therefore usefulness to a user) is not a consideration. Like you I have been vocal about this kind of linking and I'm giving up discouraging it. IMO, it makes me look silly to discourage something that obviously works and nothing is being done, where it really counts, to fix it.

[Jill]

Right Schecky. I was stricly talking about PageRank there, as that was the question that was asked.

What you're saying is really the crux of my newsletter article and this thread. We can bark all we want about what SEOs should and shouldn't do, but if it's allowed and works great for high rankings, who are we to tell people not to use it? Doesn't mean we have to use it ourselves, but if others want every advantage they can, then they should do what works.

Jill

[Scottie]

I still say things like that make your site look less professional. I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't care about the impression that their site makes (actually, I KNOW there are plenty of those people) but it really does make you wonder why a chalk company is recommending that you visit a cheese company...

Maybe it influences people's decision to buy... maybe it doesn't. But sites that are more concerned with traffic than sales are likely to get what they wish for.

[bwelford]

Spot on, scottiecl.

I believe that you should really try to do the thing for which you're the best in the world. That's your competitive advantage or your Unique Selling Proposition, as they say. So at the top of your web page you put:
Try me. I'm the very best in the world in helping you ...

But at the bottom of the page, you add:
and if you want Organically grown coffee or Discounted Airline Tickets, click here.

If you're so darned good at what you do best, how come you need to be doing other things.

[qwerty]

I agree, but I also see nothing wrong with what Ian wrote of doing. I do it too.

Linking to client sites is perfectly relevant; they all have the fact that you've worked for them in common. But you can't expect a spider or a ranking algo to figure that relevance out.