Despite many objections, Google Page Rank is an inescapable metric in the online community. Two forms of Page Rank exist online: what Google lets you see in the Google Page Rank Toolbar and what your Page Rank actually is in the Google servers. The Google Toolbar PR is seen by many on the Internet as a be-all and end-all in gauging the credibility of a particular site.
As a metric of website effectiveness and marketability, many critics have denounced the usefulness of Page Rank, especially when observed in the convenient medium of the toolbar. Akinola Akintomide of SEOChat highlighted two main criticisms of Page Rank as a valid metric this past week:
- The Toolbar PR is updated quarterly Page Rank seen is not the PR of the site at that moment.
- Back links evaluation is not accurate A brand new site that has obtained one two links from a PR 8 site can have better PR than older sites with many PR 5 links.
With many marketers and web designers ignoring and condemning Google Toolbar PR as a confusing, misleading, and a measure to be overlooked, what is it being used for by Google?
Andy Beard has identified an interesting use of the Google Toolbar value, to be manually manipulated based on Google's commercial goals, visible through the PR's on the Google Directory listings. According to a post by Andy, It seems Google used their real dataset for PageRank for the Google Directory export, forgetting that they are telling their millions of users lies on their toolbar with manual penalties, which until now had no visible proof
By using the "actual" Google server Page Rank in their directory listings and using it in the Google Directory, Google is displaying how Toolbar PR is far lower. For instance, the Melissa Data site in the Google Directory as
having a PR - 6. However, the
Google Toolbar still identifies the website as having a PR 3 .
Advertising conspiracy or dragging information, the Google Toolbar should be taken with a grain of salt. As Akinola phrases it, but I cannot say exactly "how" it [PR] will help you climb up the SERPs. That's your "actual" PageRank value, not the value the green tool gives. A website's placement for keywords being optimized for is the definitive ranking method and evaluator for the
SEO success of a website. Evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns on the basis of SERP's ranking, because that is the be-all and end-all.
