PageRank and why you shouldn’t worry about it
This week has seen widespread speculation in the online community over an update to Google’s PageRank which seems to be taking place at the moment, whereby a number of high profile websites have seen their PageRank drop dramatically.
For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, PageRank is an approximate measure of a site’s importance based on the number and quality of inbound links it receives. The theory is that important ‘authority’ sites will receive more and better links than sites with less valuable content: high authority = high PageRank. If you have it enabled on your Internet browser’s toolbar, you can see a site’s PageRank as that little green bar representing values from 0 to 10.
Now the concept is all well and good, but in displaying this information Google have inadvertantly started a thriving underground economy in link selling. Websites with high PageRanks of 8 or 9 have been openly selling links to other sites who believe the link will help their SEO efforts. Whether a website’s PageRank is particularly important to Google’s natural search rankings is another question (general opinion suggests it probably isn’t), but Google don’t like the practice one bit.Websites paying for links distorts Google’s rankings and goes against the principle that sites should be ranked in order of merit / usefulness. For quite a while there has been talk of Google taking a much harder line on paid links and the buzz is that the PageRank cull is the start of it.
High profile sites like those of Forbes and The Washington Post have seen significant reductions in their PageRank (both of these sites dropped from PR7 to PR5 overnight) with the connection seeming to be the presence of sponsored/paid links.
The move has caused an explosion of debate and no small amount of panic in various forums and blogs, but should people really be concerned? Of course not.
Firstly, the effect of PageRank on your website’s ranking is minimal. Granted, it’s a reasonable indicator, but the real key to what makes a good inbound link is relevancy and quality content.
Secondly, there is no evidence that any naturals rankings (SERPS) have so far been affected by the update. It’s more likely that the move is a warning shot from Google; a message that it won’t tolerate sites manipulating rankings by buying and selling links.
The only people who will be affected are the ones who were using their PageRanks as currency with advertisers, sites that will find they are less attractive options for sponsors and people trying to buy their way up the rankings. Moves to shut down the link economy can only be a good thing; no-one can say they weren’t warned. By their very nature Google rankings are unpredictable, but over the long-term you stand a much better chance if you follow their guidelines.
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