SEO Tycoon

**jsmcm** · 07-10-2007, 02:32 PM

Hi there,

Is there a correlation between page rank and search engine position for certain keywords? For instance if I had a pagerank of 10 (I wish) would my site be fairly well ranked or is that not always the case?

I have a new page with pagerank of 0 but for some search terms I am in the top 5 on google.

Thanks,

John

**jsmcm** · 07-10-2007, 02:34 PM

Sorry, just adding this cause I forgot to subscribe to this thread....

**Learning Newbie** · 07-10-2007, 02:40 PM

Almost no correlation. Search engines show what's the best match for a particular search, not what's the best page in general. Pagerank doesn't actually say what the best page is, but people believe it does. In any case, Google has a PR 10, but if someone searches for the name of your site, you'll beat them.

If it's the site in your sig, though, you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt.

**gringo** · 07-10-2007, 03:05 PM

If we are talking links, anchor text carries much weight in ranking. It's a very powerful signal (got signal in

)

**jsmcm** · 07-10-2007, 03:13 PM

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Learning Newbie, why do you say that I'm going to find myself in a world of hurt?

Thanks again,

John

**Learning Newbie** · 07-10-2007, 03:23 PM

Well, I'm assuming you don't have permission from experts-exchange.com, and I'm further assuming they beat you to the punch registering the domain. They let people post questions and charge people to see the answers, meaning they're for profit, and in my book at least, they're kind of spammy. On a side note, you can get the answer for free if you look at Google's cache, which means they cloak their content.

Anyway, I would look into ICANN's rules on that. Hopefully I'm wrong, just because I don't like EE.com for their shady practices.

**jsmcm** · 07-10-2007, 04:08 PM

Hi,

Thanks for that. I will look into the rules as you suggest.

I actually started this forum as I wanted it to be a totally free forum, and I actually wanted to specifically target South African residents, as it gets a little expensive to convert from South African Rands to American Dollars if we're using the .com version.

Anyway, as long as they don't have a world wide trademark (which I doubt) I should be fine.

Will double check just in case though.

Thanks again...

John

**SeLFiE_12** · 07-11-2007, 04:48 AM

i don't there is a correlation between the two...you might have high PR but you can see that on the SERPs the site on the top spot has a lesser PR...

**Juggernaut** · 07-11-2007, 05:23 AM

Not sure why people say there is no correlation between search engines ranking and page rank.

Page rank is how imporant your page is to google. If your page is very important then google will show it first.

The above is not absolute and as you noted you have PR0 pages ranking on the first page of google, but really which PR10 have you found not ranking on the first page of google for its keywords?

To simplify this issue further consider a PR4 page and a PR0 page with the same score to google on everything else (on page opt, inc links, out links...) Who do you think google will rank better?

My 2c

**psylocke** · 07-11-2007, 05:38 AM

i agree with them.. there is a correlation between the two.. if your keyword has PR10 then someone searches for it, your keyword will show up first than to those who has lower PR.

**potchie** · 07-11-2007, 08:16 AM

there is no relation between the two and o agree with the up post,,

**Mattmaul1992** · 07-11-2007, 10:14 AM

Well of course there is. But at the same time of course there isn't. If a page is actually really popular it will be high up and it will have a high page rank but it doesn't mean they have to be the same. This is why there's a confusion. A lot of the time you get a higher PR you go higher on Google, Yahoo, etc. That's another thing. Pagerank is by GOOGLE. In other words even if they were tied completely together they definitely wouldn't be used by Yahoo, etc.

**ADAM Web Design** · 07-11-2007, 10:58 AM

This depends on which PageRank you're referring to.

Toolbar PageRank? No...this is just for webmasters as a rough indicator (and really ought to be removed.)

Internal PageRank? 1 of over 100 factors, as this Google employee explains:

http://www.brianwhite.org/2007/06/25/i-have-pagerank

John: good catch on the EE thing. I said the same thing about a week ago myself. I'm not a big fan of experts-exchange.com either (I hate their stupid popup ads on everything), but I don't know what you mean by shady practices myself. Just curious.

**jsmcm** · 07-11-2007, 12:37 PM

Hi Everyone, thanks for the answers. Seems there are various thoughts on this. Makes sense though what Mattmaul1992 and others said: There is, but there isn't. I guess this is part of the google mystery!

Hey ADAM Web Design, thanks. It wasn't me that said shady practices, its was Learning Newbie. I guess people kinda see it as shady that folks like you and me help one another out for free and they profit hugely from it.

Anyway, I work for a company who's one director's son is an attorney specialising in trademarks, etc, so perhaps I should email him to get some advice on the naming of the site.

Thanks again,

John

**Learning Newbie** · 07-11-2007, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsmcm

I actually started this forum as I wanted it to be a totally free forum, and I actually wanted to specifically target South African residents, as it gets a little expensive to convert from South African Rands to American Dollars if we're using the .com version.

Well I hope I'm wrong and you're successful. I think it's sleazy of them to tell Google they're free to get you to click through to them, and then try to charge you for a membership.

**Learning Newbie** · 07-11-2007, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juggernaut

Not sure why people say there is no correlation between search engines ranking and page rank.

Because it's true.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juggernaut

Page rank is how imporant your page is to google. If your page is very important then google will show it first.

Wrong, and wrong. Sorry, this isn't to pick on you, but we just can't let misinformation slip through the cracks here.

PageRank is how many pages link to yours and what their average PR divided by how many links they have. With a dampening factor of 0.85 applied. What part of that screams "important?"

If your page is very relevant to the query then Google will show it first. Think about that for a minute. Google has a PR of 10, that's the top of the scale, and yet how often does google.com come up in a search???

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juggernaut

The above is not absolute and as you noted you have PR0 pages ranking on the first page of google, but really which PR10 have you found not ranking on the first page of google for its keywords?

"Its keywords" being the huge assumption here. How many web surfers that don't know your site exists know your keywords? What if you optimized for the wrong ones? Did you know half the queries Google runs for people have never been run before, they're "unique?" The goal isn't to come up for a small handful of keywords, it's bringing qualified traffic to your site. And PR doesn't do that for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juggernaut

To simplify this issue further consider a PR4 page and a PR0 page with the same score to google on everything else (on page opt, inc links, out links...) Who do you think google will rank better?

All else is never equal. That's exactly the point, and you just spelled out the answer to your own question. If you have two pages with:

The same title
The same h1 tag
The same content - and one of them hasn't been marked duplicate and thrown into the fire
The same links with the same anchor text from all of the same pages

Then Page Rank is used to break the tie. In all other situations, though, a more important variable decides who ranks where.

**blogginginc** · 07-11-2007, 11:43 PM

So, if pagerank is not important for your pages to appear first in google for some terms, why do we bother trying to get backlinks for the root page? (submitting to directories, exchanging links, buying links), if this is so true, It would be enough with building great informative articles trying to target a niche and we would be first immediately, but that doesn't happen, in fact, I've found that many times I added long tail keywords 4+, my page doesn't appear on the front cover of google, instead, other pages that doesn't even have that long tail keyword go first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Almost no correlation. Search engines show what's the best match for a particular search, not what's the best page in general. Pagerank doesn't actually say what the best page is, but people believe it does. In any case, Google has a PR 10, but if someone searches for the name of your site, you'll beat them.

If it's the site in your sig, though, you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt.

**vangogh** · 07-12-2007, 12:07 AM

It's like Adam said above. PageRank is one of many factors Google uses to determine how a page ranks. There is a correlation since it is a factor, but it's one factor among many.

Lower PR pages can and do outrank higher PR pages all the time. The trap people often get caught up in is thinking PR is everything. It's not. Some think the goal of seo is to increase your PageRank. It isn't.

If you do things right you'll find your PR likely goes up, but it doesn't have to in order for your pages to rank well.

PR is one factor among many factors. I think at last mention Google said they base rankings on over 200 factors. How important in all those is the single factor of PageRank? I don't know and neither does anyone else really. It's probably more important than some things and less than important than others.

The main point is not to focus on PR alone. There are 199+ other factors you'd be missing out on if you do.