I was wondering if someone can help me better understand how Google comes up with their PR's. I'll use this forum as an example. If I go to http://www.webmaster-talk.com, it has a PR of 7. To get where I am, I had to click on The Google Forum, which carries a PR of 0. All the other forums I clicked on also have a PR of 0. So, if all the forums are at 0, how can the home page rank at a 7? In theory, Google sees all the forums as "useless", so why would they rank this site so high? After all, most if not all the content comes from inside the forums, which are rated 0.

Because most people link to http://www.webmaster-talk.com/ not http://www.webmaster-talk.com/showthread.php?t=22893

This is a good question, but Google wouldn't give a forum a PR of 7 if it thought it was useless. It may have something to do the with the fact that forums consist of dynamic pages. This forum, for instance, has an approx. total of 114,000 pages indexed by Google. That sure adds to the importance, as well as the link popularity (backward links), which is 3,350. This is a high number for Google since they only count the sites that they feel are important enough. But, as far as a 0 PR is concerned, your guess is as good as mine.

Sorry cptnwinky,
I posted too late. Good point.

As well, Google is moving away from PR. They are slowly phasing it out of their algorithm altogether. Really, as it sits now PR is nothing more than a novelty. This happened because too many webmasters thought that PR was the actuall measure of their site (at least the most important one) so they started devising ways to cheat the system and get more PR. This type of change for Google is innevitable.

So even though the pages in the forum come up to a PR of 0, they still count towards the overall rating of the site? It's just a little confusing since they are at 0, and not even a 1. But regardless, the content within the forums DOES matter, correct?

I understand the part regarding backlinks. I have one question about this. When people link to this site, they link to the home page. The home page here isn't the forum index. On my site, I do not have a home page, per se. I have the index.htm file, but it automatically redirects the user to the forum index with the "META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="0; URL=" command. Since I don't really have a home page, will this hurt rankings? If so, would a portal be a good idea?

Another reason most of them come up as zero is look how many of them are created within the last few days. These are most of the ones that you will find and respond too. Therefore Google has not even updated the public display of PR for these pages.

Also, the home page here is the forum index.

You have very good points regarding the PR of the newer topics. I never thought about it that way.

As for the home page, looks as if you're correct. When the url is first typed in, it displays as xxx.com, but after you surf around and head back to index, it's displayed as /index.php?. That just through me for a loop, and I thought they were different pages.

Thanks for clearing that up, cpt!

Originally Posted by DavidB

I was wondering if someone can help me better understand how Google comes up with their PR's. I'll use this forum as an example. If I go to http://www.webmaster-talk.com, it has a PR of 7. To get where I am, I had to click on The Google Forum, which carries a PR of 0. All the other forums I clicked on also have a PR of 0. So, if all the forums are at 0, how can the home page rank at a 7? In theory, Google sees all the forums as "useless", so why would they rank this site so high? After all, most if not all the content comes from inside the forums, which are rated 0.

Here is the explanation of PR

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Where PR(A) is the PageRank of Page A (the one we want to work out).

D is a dampening factor. Nominally this is set to 0.85

PR(T1) is the PageRank of a site pointing to Page A

C(T1) is the number of links off that page

PR(Tn)/C(Tn) means we do that for each page pointing to Page A

Now if you look at the formula it specifies that PR of a page depends on the backlinks to that page. Now as already said many people links to the homepage but not to the forums page and so PR of home page ios higher and not of forums page.

But you see a link to the forums page only from the front page and not from any other page. Though one backlink from a PR 7 page is sufficient to make it PR 3- PR 4 but as its internal link so it has very less effect. It would be nice if you look at some of the older threads as there is some content many people may have linked to it giving some PR.

Thanks
Shabbir Bhimani

nice formula.. but if winky is right PR is gonig to be a thing of the past. What will be next then.. what will google use for ranking then?

The same thing they have always based most of their ranking on. Content.

The reason that most people looked to PR as a way to gain traffic through the Google is because everyone thought this was some miraculous easy way out. People are always looking for the way with less work and more results, this is true with the search engines as well.

If you want good results from Google, have more original content than the competition. You'll smoke them every time.

Originally Posted by cptnwinky

Because most people link to http://www.webmaster-talk.com/ not http://www.webmaster-talk.com/showthread.php?t=22893

cptnwinky, My home page is a PR of 6 and my secondary pages are 5's. When I check the link popularity of my PR 5 pages, Google only show about 35 backward links and they are all from within my own site. None are from external sites. So why are they 5's and your pages linking from your home page are 0's? With a home page PR of 7, you'd think the others would have a little PR. I'm stumped. Could it be because they 're dynamic pages with query strings? I know google does seem to give a lower PR to dynamic pages. Again I'm stumped.

Originally Posted by cptnwinky

Another reason most of them come up as zero is look how many of them are created within the last few days. These are most of the ones that you will find and respond too. Therefore Google has not even updated the public display of PR for these pages.

I think that answers that question.

Question answered, thanks. This is a very useful forum.

Google uses many different variables to determine PR. Rank of the lower pages is actually not "useless" even if they are 0. All those pages have content, and the googlebot just loves content. If you are looking for the answer to a coding question, or google question...you type it into google...what comes up? A PR 0 page on wmt. You also have to consider the traffic quantity this site gets. The google toolbar tells google what sites you are visiting, so they can use that data in their PR calculations.

The PR 0 pages do count. If you have 10,000 0 pages pointing to your main page, it will get good rank. It is better to have a ranked page link to yours, but it isn't entirely required.

You also have to consider that its been a few months since the PR update. So, many of these 0 pages will have a rank when the update happens.

The main factors for rank are:
Content
Backlinks
Internal links
Quantity of traffic
Optimization

Good luck in your online ventures.

Neorunner

Google uses many different variables to determine PR. Rank of the lower pages is actually not "useless" even if they are 0. All those pages have content, and the googlebot just loves content. If you are looking for the answer to a coding question, or google question...you type it into google...what comes up? A PR 0 page on wmt. You also have to consider the traffic quantity this site gets. The google toolbar tells google what sites you are visiting, so they can use that data in their PR calculations.

If you type in a question as search terms then the competition to that terms is not that high and so PR 0 page comes up. But if someone has higher PR he will rank better. The PR I am talking is of internal PR and not as seen on toolbar which is infrequent in updates.

The PR 0 pages do count. If you have 10,000 0 pages pointing to your main page, it will get good rank. It is better to have a ranked page link to yours, but it isn't entirely required.

Absolutely

The main factors for rank are:
Content
Backlinks
Internal links
Quantity of traffic
Optimization

I dont agree with the list. I have a different list.

The list is
Content
Backlinks
Internal links
On page Optimization.

To rank well you dont need the high amountof traffic.

Thanks
Shabbir Bhimani