Zero...doesn't...equal...three. Slow down there, Einstein. Your rocket scientist ways are foreign to me.

The problem with DotHQ's statement is that it almost can't be disproven. Anyone who has a TBPR and tries to argue his point is caught because they know they have a PR at all. So they have to pay some attention to it, but only for that reason.

I don't necessarily think it's "worthless", but I think it's "greatly devalued and overrated". I honestly don't give a **** what the PR of most of the pages/sites I work on is anymore. It doesn't amount to anything other than yet another metric that can be used, abused, twisted, and destroyed by webmasters. (I think this is called The Alexa Syndrome.)

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Hey, that was going to be my answer. PageRank ( no space as per Google ) has one meaning. It's used to sell links to people who are gullible enough to believe in PR. Sort of like how beauty is only skin deep, but to a prostitute beauty is money in the bank.

Well said! The money in your wallet is only paper... so is the toliet paper in your bathroom... Why do we value one more than the other?

Just to throw my hat in the ring... I agree with the majority of people here. Google PageRank today doesnt mean much in terms of search engine rankings, however it is still important.

The reason I say this is because the webmaster community has basically managed to make it a currency in its own right. Like people have said here there are some who will pay hard currency to get a link from a site with a high PageRank - so to me that gives it significants.

Goto the marketplace of some of the top webmaster forums and check out the threads of site sales and you will see that the PR is mentioned in 99% of the threads... because to some this will raise the value of the site.

Originally Posted by memberpro

Well said! The money in your wallet is only paper... so is the toliet paper in your bathroom... Why do we value one more than the other?

The money in my wallet is plastic, with magnetic encoding of my account number, but pretend cash isn't as outdated as table based layouts. I think the ink printed on the paper money is probably more valuable than the paper itself. I say this because a $100 bill and a $5 bill use the same paper, and it's only the ink that distinguishes them.

maybe anyone selling links based on the PR value should read this;

http://www.pandia.com/features/pagerank.html

this

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2165111

and this

http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/21-searchking.html

I like having a higher pagerank, although I would MUCH rather have a lot of content on my website. If I had to choose between pagerank 5 on my forums or 100k+ posts, I would go for the 100k posts.

Originally Posted by memberpro

Well said! The money in your wallet is only paper... so is the toliet paper in your bathroom... Why do we value one more than the other?

Because if we get rich enough, the money in our wallets can serve as toilet paper in a pinch (just as long as we don't use quarters and nickels and stuff...that probably wouldn't work too well. Probably wouldn't work to use Learning Newbie's money, either.)

Oh joy. Another PageRank debate. Is anyone as tired of these as I am?

Threads like this and the other wonderful ones all over the web are the reason Google should kill off the toolbar PR once and for all. It would stop the snake oilers selling PR links to the naive and greedy or move them all over to selling based on the equally misunderstood Alexa rank.

And without being able to glimpse the out of date toolbar PR no one would go chasing after it anymore.

Adam the bills can be used as toilet paper, but the credit card can pick a lock.

Destroy Toolbar PR? That sounds like something someone on here has said in the past, Steve.

And yes, a credit card can be used to pick a lock. You see how much more useful it is than Toolbar PR?

I thought I might have heard that getting rid of toolbar PR thing before. Isn't everything more useful than toolbar PR?

Isn't everything more useful than toolbar PR

You're forgetting about Alexa rank

PR is marginally in front there IMO.

page rank is a number which is calculated with a formulas . the variable of this formula is backlink qauntity .

in my opinion , toolbar page rank is nothink . it does not effect your serp result .

but on the other way , most of the people care toolbar . because this pr is an aconomic value .

shortly , what pr mean ? i dont know :P

Originally Posted by stOx

I'm not going to stop them if they want to pay for a PR5 link.
I will take $10 for my pocket fluff if you want to pay it, It doesn't mean that my pocket fluff is worth $10 though.

Talk about selling snake oils. Point of note, the cost for buying links on this directory was 3 dollars even few days ago. Now that the pr went up to 5 it is selling for 5 dollars. Yeah, PR certainly has no value at all

It's more to do with supply and demand. Most people look at the PR of a directory to decide "how good" it is, So if that's what they want, that's what i provide.

Is a link in the directory worth $5? Yeah, probably. not because of the PR though.

There are two competing theories of economics. Karl Marx and Adam Smith basically agreed on one thing (only) - that everything has an inherent value, and it comes from how much labor went into making. On the other hand, the more popular theory is that something is worth what somebody will pay you for it.

And PR is obviously something a lot of people are willing to pay for. I'm not one of them, but I'm probably in the minority here.

You may be in the minority but you're sure not the only one.

I"ve always bought into the latter theory. The value of something is what someone else places on it.

I'm with the latter theory too and it's been my answer every time someone here has asked how much their site is worth.

One thing that needs to be taken into account is worth what in relation to what. For example with PR it may be worth something if your plans are to sell it to someone. I know there are plenty of people who will pay for links on a PR8 site and if you can build a site with PR8 then you can certainly profit by selling the site or links on the site, etc.

But that worth in relation to the sale is usually based on the mistaken belief that the PR alone is seen as a worthy reason to rank a site. So while the high PR site may be worth something in the sense that people will pay for it that worth is based on something that's not real.

As an analogy let's say I have some cubic zirconia. If you believe it's a real diamond I can sell it to you at a price inline with a real diamond. In a sense the worth of the zirconia could be said to be the value you are paying for it.

But cubic zirconia isn't a diamond and as soon as you realize it isn't the value you applied to it is gone. If you hope to recover what you spent you'll need to sell it to someone who mistakenly believes it's a real diamond.

So is that specific cubic zirconia worth the price of a real diamond or does the worth derive from a lie about it?

Same for PR. Yes people will pay you for a link on a high PR site, but the value of that link is based on a lie. It's intrinsic value is far less than the purchase price.

Originally Posted by vangogh

As an analogy let's say I have some cubic zirconia. If you believe it's a real diamond I can sell it to you at a price inline with a real diamond.

Good analogy Van. But I don't believe that you, being the man of scrupulous integrity that you are, would even contemplate taking advantage of someone else's lack of understanding for your own gain.

I wouldn't. It was just meant as an analogy since it seemed to fit nicely with the PR talk. I prefer to sell the actual diamond than spend the time convincing someone a cubic zirconia is indeed a diamond.

And the best part is if you sell the real diamond your customers are more likely to come back to buy a second one or recommend you to their friends. Hard to sell a cubic zirconia you're passing off as a diamond to the same person twice.