CreationIS – Internet Services

I would like to throw a question out there for your feedback and comments. Is Google PageRank™ a viable indicator as to the popularity and profitability of a web site?

There is a major school of thought circulating the internet which states that if you are not ranked well by Google’s PageRank™ system, you can not be placed well in Google’s relevancy search engine results. SEO companies continually expound on this concept as being the thermostat for what is hot and what is not. However, I have another thought to throw at you. I disagree!

If you have comments about this topic or have experienced something different I would like to hear from you.

Why would an Internet Marketing Strategist make such a statement? That’s very simple – because in my experience I have seen conflicting results.

Google PageRank™ does not seem to be the indicator everyone believes it to be! It is my belief that people have a gross misconception as to what PageRank™ does or doesn’t do. It does not place you higher in relevancy search engines. What I am saying is: If you have a 4 PR and someone else has a 1 PR you will not always be higher that the person with a 1 PR. Over and over again I have seen web sites with zero or low PR ranked better and placed higher in the relevancy search engines than web sites with higher PR. I have optimized websites and achieved great results where the web site has recieved the #1, #2 and even #3 spots simultaneously in Google, Yahoo and MSN, and these web sites had zero or very low PageRank – PR’s of one and two on the high side. I have also seen many web sites that have no link backs, very few pages indexed, they don’t show up anywhere in the top 500 web page results and yet – have page ranks of 3 or more.

So what good is this frenzy over Google’s PageRank™? If I can achieve the top relevancy search results in Google without a high PR – why worry about the PR? That is my question!

It seems to me that there is something fundamentally flawed with the "PageRank™" system. Has anyone else found this to be true?

Does this mean that high Page Ranking doesn’t help you in any way? No! I don’t believe so. I think PR could potentially be a good barometer for the longevity and validity of a company and adds credibility over time. And even that may be faulty or flawed. Not that some results can’t be faked like in most things – deceivers will find a way to deceive, but for the most part they are a good indicator. A high page ranking can show that a company has been around for a while, giving it the credibility of longevity. Why? Because generally, it takes time to achieve a page rank of 4 and 5 or more. People like to know that you have been doing business for some time.

Once again the questions is: Is it accurate, and should I base buying decisions about an internet company on this data? Possibly, but I wouldn’t use that as my sole source for my buying decisions. I just put in a random search term of "wedding cake decorations" into Google. In order of appearance is a PR 4, PR4, PR5, PR3, and a PR5. O.K., so if PageRank™ is about popularity and the more popular you are the higher the page rank and popularity is based on links from other web sites linking to your web site – it still stands to reason that a PR5 should appear in the relevancy search engines higher than a PR3. It does not. What about the theory that a high PR can be related to longevity? Well, looking at the first PR3 result on the page, the web site was created in October 1999. It seems to be very popular – it ranks high in the relevancy search results and it has been around for almost ten years. But for a ten year old company – that is not a high PageRank™.

Ultimately, what does it all boil down to? In my experience, and through general observation, you don’t have to have a high Google PageRank™ in order to have good relevancy search engine result in Google search. And if that is indeed the case – what is the point of worrying about Google PageRank™? Does it ad to validity of a web site and its longevity? Possible, but as we saw from one example above – not always. Does it increase your chances of staying power in the top searched results once you achieve them? That may be a viable question – it remains to be seen.

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