#3 really mankes me want to Desphinn this because TBPR has never reflected exactly what was going on inside Google for the PageRank.

In many ways it is more an indicator of trust.

Trust doesn't determine whether you can achive a particular ranking, but it does play a factor in how difficult it will be to achieve.

Andy, with all due respect, I think you need to re-read the article, because that's exactly Jen's point.

My understanding was that the intention of the article was to clear up any confusion - as such if there was something worded in a way that could be confusing, I feel it is worth pointing out - articles can be corrected - I do it all the time.

They don’t want to be manipulated. In the past Search Engines were burned by their days of wearing their PR on their sleeve. High PR sites sold their page rank power to the highest bidder. In an effort to thwart that they developed another system of allocating page rank and this time they didn’t show us all their cards.

The article suggests that at some time Google showed a true representation of raw PageRank - I contend they have never done that.

The article suggests that because of that mistake they came up with something new "in an effort to thwart that" - Google come up with new search algorithms to improve their search results.

What Jenn was trying to convey is beside the point.

I misunderstood.. sounded like you thought Jen was suggesting TBPR & rankings had a high correlation.  But on your point:

>>The article suggests that at some time Google showed a true representation of raw PageRank - I contend they have never done that.

No, not in real time. But historically, TBPR updates showed us a much more accurate representation of TRUE PR.  At the very least there WAS a higher correlation between high PR and high rankings (pre florida update).  Today, neither is true.  Who's to say that isn't a deliberate attempt by google to make their algorithm more difficult to game?

TL; DR - I think the point everyone needs to get from this is: TBPR != Rankings

Jebus... 'great' to see ya back Andy... bwaha ha ha ha....

Ok, Todd, he does actually have a point with;

" In an effort to thwart that they developed another system of allocating page rank and this time they didn’t show us all their cards."

I did miss that and 'another system' does elude to a seperate beast altogether. I am going to make the leap that she meant it is policed and occasionally manually adjusted. If Google ever gave true across the board TBPR numbers, I doubt it lasted long.

As for the whole TBPR thing, I beat that up last week. At the end of the day I do get where she's coming from and the more subjective 'Makes ME Die' in the title keeps it from being a hard and fast set of observations ;0)

Great discusison here actually. And I think I should clarify Dave you are exactly right saying

"I am going to make the leap that she meant it is policed and occasionally manually adjusted."

That is what I meant, but I wasn't clear on that point. They made adjustments so that TBPR was LESS accurate.  I only contend that originally there was more truth to TBPR than there is now. But there is a lesson to be learned here for me in my future posts. So thank you all for weighing in.

TheGypsy:  Agreed.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the whole TBPR vs. PR conversation.  To worry about any kind of PR while doing SEO seems masterbatory.  The goal is to go out and get links from highly trusted sources.  Just because a link moves you from a PR 4 to a PR 5 (even if you could magically see the REAL PR) doesn't mean you'll rank any better.  So let's just keep building links and never mention PR (or TBPR) again. (unless it's to say don't talk about it).  ;)

It's hard to take an article seriously that says Page Rank as two words rather than PageRank one word. It's that sort of mixing up of SEO terms that gets newbies confused.

@Jill - lol. Yea, well if I do that twice in one week I may just go bleeding mad!! I am pretty sure you know my stance on the little bits and bytes that can confuse the noobs on terminology.

Jenn... looks like U gotz some editing to do!! lol...

Fair enough. Lesson learned for sure.

Tough crowd.

Love the point about quantity over quality, though it would be nice if there was some magic box that told you exactly how many links you need and where from to raise PR3 to PR5 ;)

defo tough crowd, ouch!