18 replies to this topic

[compar]

LOL Bob. It's not anyone "claiming" anything! Go read any other seo forum on the net and it's standard knowledge that they do this. 

We're really not out to pull the wool over your eyes!  This is actually one of the few things that Google DOES admit to doing!

Jill

Jill,

I'm sorry if "claim" sounds like I think you are making it up. I didn't mean it that way. I meant it in the sense of you are telling me.

Why didn't you make this point about the Google at least using this PR4 filter to indicate value of backward links. All you ever told me was that I was looking for some unfair advantage and that Google should never do anything with link: results that represented relevancy or value?

[qwerty]

I don't want to further confuse this issue, but I don't think that G's practice of only showing PR4+ pages on a link: command is the same thing as "rating" linking pages. Just because a page has a relatively high PR it doesn't necessarily mean it's a more relevant page.

[compar]

Compar, take another look at my explanation of this, then take a look at this search for the URL you mention.

I guess I must be really dense but I don't know what you are talking about . You said:

You can find examples by searching for sites containing a company's domain name (most likely linked back to the homepage) and compare that number to the inbound links shown on Google for the same site.

Compare what number? Are you saying that an internal link from a page that is lower than PR4 will not show up in Google's link: search?

As far as the search link you provided what does that illustrate? I can see how it makes a lie out of my suggestion that Google doesn't know the site exists, but it does prove the site has a PR of 4 or better. In fact my toolbar doesn't give it any PR at all.

And you still haven't explained why a link: search on this URL yields nothing.

I'm not questioning you or Jill in regards to Google's pronouncement regarding sites with PR4 or better. I'm just saying I think I have seen a lot of situations that don't follow the rule. Maybe it is the mess that Google's PR ranking seem to be in at the moment, but I'm sure I can find you multiple instances of sites with PRs less than 4 being listed as in coming or backward links to pages by google.

[Haystack]

Compare what number? Are you saying that an internal link from a page that is lower than PR4 will not show up in Google's link: search?

That was the case earlier today when, as you pointed out, Google was showing no inbound links yet a search for the link itself found a couple inbound links.

As of right now, Google's inbound links are showing for me, so the example no longer holds.

As far as the search link you provided what does that illustrate? I can see how it makes a lie out of my suggestion that Google doesn't know the site exists, but it does prove the site has a PR of 4 or better. In fact my toolbar doesn't give it any PR at all.

It's not the PR of the search results page on Google, but the PR of the listed pages that matters.

And you still haven't explained why a link: search on this URL yields nothing.

I think has been explained. Google doesn't show all inbound links to a site. However, as pointed out above, this particular example is now showing links while it wasn't earlier today (at least for me).

Maybe it is the mess that Google's PR ranking seem to be in at the moment, but I'm sure I can find you multiple instances of sites with PRs less than 4 being listed as in coming or backward links to pages by google.

I'm sure you could and we could spend a lot of time trying to analyze every exception.

At a high level, I hope people understand that (all other things being equal) a site with more inbound links will generally rank higher than a site with less inbound links. Since Google's inbound link report is somewhat abridged, don't rely on that to determine exactly where you stand vs. competing sites.