The Underscore Archives

<snip>
>> There is a danger in using the Google PR toolbar as reasoning >for  
>> making
>> changes to a site. It as an (unreliable) indicator only, and I  
>> would not
>> recommend making changes to a site based on it.

>*snip* yes of course, that was what I was eluding to, the toolbar  
>isn't accurate or timely, but could be a guide.
</snip>

I should have been clearer in my post, what I meant was I would not use a
site or page's Google page rank, *nor* the page rank tool bar as the reason
to make changes to a page.

I don't think Google PR is reliable as an indication of how well a page or
site will necessarily rank on Google or other engines for a given term, for
the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.


<snip>
>As you probably know PageRank is calculated based upon the >rankings  
>of pages, and links used to distribute the ranking.  
</snip>

I too have seen the maths calculations / guesses put forward by others for
how the Google PR is worked out and have never been totally convinced by
these. Mainly because I have seen many sites that don't fit with the
calculations/guesses at all but yet have or don't have a PR contrary to what
the calculation would arrive at.
 
I don't think it is as simple as those calculations, but would be happy to
be proved wrong, as it is all a learning process and with seo you have to
keep learning. 

I can only speak from my own experience but I long ago stopped focusing on
the things I couldn't control reliably/consistently (pr) and instead I focus
on the things I can control which gets top placement results; that is
semantic, well optimised, good content that people actually want to
read/find/search for. If you don't at least have that - your seo work will
be much harder and your results less consistent. At least that's what I have
found anyway.

I would be interested to see how your no-follow experiment goes though - be
great if you could let me know if it worked as you wanted it to / expected.
:)

Sam

Beyond Metrix Ltd ~ evolving business online ~ www.beyondmetrix.com 

Usability, Accessibility, Validation, Best Practice, SEO and online
marketing.


-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Hamilton [mailto:matth at netsight.co.uk] 
Sent: 21 January 2008 15:00
To: underscore at under-score.org.uk
Subject: Re: [_] Thumb Twiddling