Sphinn - Lies, damn lies and PageRank statistics

38
Sphinn It!

Went Hot: November 19, 2007 - 2:03 pm
Posted By: MattSawyer 594 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.timnash.co.uk)
Category: Google

I thought it was all over that the message had finally gotten through to even the most stubborn digital point fan boy. PageRank does not equate to search engine rankings, yet some still remain unconvinced what’s scary is some of the FUD coming out to prove the link.

6 Comments

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Comments

from dannysullivan 593 days ago #

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Saves me from having to so a similar rant. PageRank does not equal search rankings. I've seen blogger after blogger complain that they've lost PageRank but few if any are talking about whether they've had a traffic decrease.

from finalwebsites 593 days ago #

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Sure those blogger complain the drop if their customers for sponsored blogs buy a post only because the pagerank and not because the authority or the quality of the article ;)

from AndyBeard 593 days ago #

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Danny I think I have mentioned in almost every post I have written on this that so far I haven't seen any change in rankings, and I think others have too, and also speculated that this might be a precursor to the next stage in punishment.

I actually have a whole load of SEO articles lined up, but whilst I know a lot of my audience will appreciate them, other would look on it as a slap in the face in the current climate.

This article I submitted earlier today however does indicate that those blogs "zero ranked" might be facing search traffic hits.

http://sphinn.com/story/14801

from Halfdeck 593 days ago #

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Toolbar PageRank doesn't impact rankings because by the time internal PageRanks are exported, any changes to ranking due to PageRank fluctuations have already happened.

For example:

May 1: Toolbar PR export: your home page TBPR = 5.
May 2: You write an awesome link bait.
May 3-7: 10,000 bloggers link to your link bait.
May 8-12: Those links get crawled by Google and folded into its daily PageRank calculations
May 13+: Due to your increase in quality backlinks, your ranking and traffic increase.
May 14: Toolbar PR: still 5. No export has taken place.

Aug 1: Your traffic is up 210% compared to May 1. Your rankings improved.
Aug 2: Toolbar export: Now you're TBPR 6. You expect your traffic to increase suddenly from 210% to 300%. It doesn't happen. Why?

Because a Toolbar export/update doesn't change internal PageRank values, which are calculated daily.

The recent TBPR prank also doesn't impact ranking (this time around, at least) because the green in the toolbar, for sites labelled as link sellers, no longer have anything to do with internal PageRank.

BTW, an interesting snippet in this SEL article that explains why Google did not hand out TBPR penalties even handedly.

http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php

"Why not just change the PageRank meter to something like a red bar, to warn those potentially buying links from getting them from a nabbed site. That would be helpful from a consumer point of view, preventing people from wasting their money.

Google says that by doing this, it would be easy for anyone to detect which sites have not had their paid links discounted -- and since they don't want people to buy links, that would work against their efforts. For the same reason, Google is only decreasing the PageRank for a subset of the sites they actually know about."

from g1smd 593 days ago #

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I wish I had had a camera handy to capture Danny's facial expression when the PageRank Question came up at SMX london last week.

from dannysullivan 592 days ago #

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Andy, yeah, didn't mean to suggest you in particular weren't point out a PR drop doesn't mean a traffic drop. That's just generally been the feel from a range of blog posts I've read. And absolutely, anyone hit with a PR drop had better be wondering if there's more to come. I think most probably won't see a traffic drop, but that's a sign they've been targeted in one way by Google, and some other sites as it has said itself could get hit with actual ranking penalties.