5 replies to this topic

[TheGreatDane]

Hi experts
it could be interesting if you would share your opinion/experience on this:

I often see - especially in link directories - that even though the domain PR is f.ex. 5, the subpage where my product/site would be listed may have PR 0 (or no PR at all). Providing that I'm only interested in link juice (not traffic), is it then of any value to get a link from this subpage? Does it make a difference at all what PR the domain has, if the subpage nevertheless has a PR of 0?

Thanks for your input!

[Jill]

What you're seeing is a function of the toolbar PageRank tool simply not reporting accurately.

Presumably this is on purpose.

[TheGreatDane]

What you're seeing is a function of the toolbar PageRank tool simply not reporting accurately.

Jill, I am not talking about the toolbar, but PR values from a backlink tool which clearly states the difference between domain PR and (sub)page PR.

[Michael Martinez]

Jill, I am not talking about the toolbar, but PR values from a backlink tool which clearly states the difference between domain PR and (sub)page PR.

No one outside of Google can accurately track and measure Google's internal PageRank.

No one.

Absolutely no one.

There is not one credible tool on the Web that will do this for you.

[TheGreatDane]

No one outside of Google can accurately track and measure Google's internal PageRank.

No one.

Absolutely no one.

There is not one credible tool on the Web that will do this for you.

The consequence of this your statement would then be, that there is no way to judge the quality of a link (still thinking ranking, not traffic). Is this your opinion/experience?

[Michael Martinez]

The consequence of this your statement would then be, that there is no way to judge the quality of a link (still thinking ranking, not traffic). Is this your opinion/experience?

I would say there is no way to judge the quality of a link based on analysis of PageRank. Even if we assume for the sake of discussion that Toolbar PR is a valid indicator, it's generally considered to be a derivative value based at least in part on the internal PageRank -- most people say it's a logarithmic derivative. We don't have to quibble over whether it is.

What that leads us to conclude is that not all PR 4 links are equal. Some PR 4 links are hardly better than PR 3 links and some PR 4 links are almost as good as PR 5 links.

But even so it's not that simple, as every document's PageRank is (supposedly) divided among its outbound links. So if you have two PR 4 pages, one with 4 outbound links and one with 40 outbound links, which document do you want the link from? Not knowing which PR 4 document has the most value, you might actually get more value from the document with 40 links than the document with 4 links. But most people in the SEO community -- if pressed to make a choice -- would generally prefer a link on the document that only has 4 links (a choice I have often advocated in illustrative comments).

And yet, because we don't know whether these documents are penalized, whether their links are being allowed to pass value, any guesses we make about which links are better are pretty much worthless.

And that is why I (at least, although others have as well) have often said, "Take the link that is most likely to drive some traffic to your site." If you get traffic from the link itself then whether the link passes value in a search index becomes less necessary to know.

And if you focus on links that create visibility, brand value, and have the potential to send traffic on their own, you don't need to invest in a lot of link building for SEO. The traffic a site receives is far more important than what keywords it ranks for on the basis of anchor text.