Comments on: Is PageRank the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence?

By: #SMCQ16 On Measuring Influence | Social Media Club

#SMCQ16 On Measuring Influence | Social Media Club — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:43:30 +0000

[...] “Is PageRank the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence?” Nine By Blue, October 8, 2008 [...]

By: SEO SERP

SEO SERP — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:24:47 +0000

If you check out eBay and do a search on text links you will find a huge list of people selling page rank for domains that are total junk. They managed to get an inflated page rank from linking in to high pr sites – but managed to not have any content at all. One can conclude from this that page rank and page popularity are not necessarily the same thing. Take page rank with a grain of salt. Nothing is a substitute for a good web site with a great need where people will want to link to it.

By: SEO - All 2009 Nominees » SEMMYS.org

SEO - All 2009 Nominees » SEMMYS.org — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:20:25 +0000

[...] Is PageRank the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence? Vanessa Fox, Nine by Blue | 10/8/08 [...]

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:32:32 +0000

I agree with you on all your points. Page Rank is not the end all when it comes to Google, but it can show a website progress with the search engines. It is possible to have a higher Page Ranking than a more relevant website by building there links. But what are Links? Hopefully future traffic.

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:29:33 +0000

Very few links express any sort of editorial endorsement, so PageRank is an inappropriate measure for sentiment.

Google would do everyone a great service by getting rid of the little green bar in all forms.

By: Riza Berkan

Riza Berkan — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:59:56 +0000

Good Points. The most disturbing fact is that PageRank is a black-box that can be manipulated by its designers. They can turn the lights off of many businesses overnight. When the semantic technologies take over, the dominance of Google’s black-box ranking will become obselete. The Web search will then grow out of its toddler level intelligence, and will shed its reliance on single-point decision makers. SEOs should be looking forward to this transition if they want to transform their profession from witchcraft (i.e. guessing what Google will do next) to something more scientific and durable.

By: guardian

guardian — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:35:27 +0000

Hey Vanessa

I was expecting pictures, lol. This post is an eye opener for SEOs who are obsessed with page rank. There are many more factors to consider other than page rank for your website.

By: Devin

Devin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:02:49 +0000

Great post, I understand now more clearly the term page rank and the context in which it is used.

By: Nick Gerner

Nick Gerner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:43:37 +0000

It’s pretty terrifying to think about how easy it is to game PR. I’ve seen some scary examples.

I agree that there’s a lot of important factors webmasters need to consider to get a feel for “quality”, regardless of how many or how few factors, or what specifically Google is using in the algo. Who cares! They probably change it all the time anyway.

Of course I think algorithms like PR can be a good measure of editorial endorsement, by and large. But it’s pretty tricky to to filter out isolated islands of link farms. Sadly in the SEO industry bad links are too often interspersed with good links.

It’s pretty easy to see examples of gaming the system. Just check out link counts (from any source you like) for some of the SERPs. You might see a few hundred links for the top players and a few thousand links from the bottom players. I’ve seen those few thousand being worthless on more than one occasion.

I’m always glad to see someone stand up for true quality, which Google, et al. are really trying to model.

By: Paul Lee

Paul Lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:57:21 +0000

Excellent post and I very much agree PR is one of those factors people are having a hard time loosening their grip from especially from clients.