What Is PR And How Is It Calculated ?
Good PR or Bad PR, does it really matter ?
What exactly is PR ? It is not Public Relations as I had first thought when I was setting up my blog. The search for the meaning of PR started for me personally after I read a post about someone selling a site that had a PR4 in its description. I thought to myself, how cares ? Finally, after surfing around for the meaning, I discovered that it is the google Page Rank for a site. The ranking is from 0 to 10. I had to dig further to find out how it is calculated and what secret steps one can take to increase a ranking. I noticed that the ranking can change greatly if you do something that the ranking system dislikes.
The major factor involves the backlinks to your site. If the backlinks to your site are from sites that have a high PR, it will improve your PR ranking. The formula keeps a sum of the PR values that your site gets from the pages that link to a page on your site. Each page can have a different ranking. Here is the confusing formula :
PR( X ) = ( 1- d ) + d* SUM (( PR( I to X )/C(I)+….)
- PR( X ) is the rank of a particular page on your site
- d is factor that is random hits and some other factors, it is usually 0.85
- PR( I to X ) is the page rank of the site’ I’ that is linking to your page
- C ( I ) is the number of links off that page ( lots of links off, the level of importance decreases )
- PR(I to X )/C(I) is the PR value that your page gets from the page linking to your page
- SUM (PR(I to X )/C(I) is the sum of all PR values of all of the pages outside your site that link to your page
What a freaky formula that boggles the mind. I will outline my interpretation in the next paragraph. If I am offtrack, please help me out through a comment to this post.
If you have lots and lots of high ranking sites linking to your site, it affects your PR in a very positive way. If the high ranked page on that site that is linking to your page is full of other links that exit the site, the importance of that particular backlink is lessened.
As your PR increases, it can improve the way that search engines value your site. Of course, it is not the only factor. For instance, if you are trying to get listed high up in a search engine based on a certain keyword or phrase such as ‘ make money online ‘, the archor text ( text that is used in the link to your site ) is very important. If the backlink text is just the name of your site, your ranking for your site name improves which does not really help much. If the anchor text is ‘ make money online ‘, then your ranking for that phrase increases.
Ok, enough of the goggly guk. PR is great for valuing your site and for attracting advertisers to buy ad space on your site. It is not the only magical factor. If you do a search, sometimes you will see lowered ranked sites higher up in the search results than the super highly ranked sites. Nevertheless, it is still important and it increases the importance of your site.
Something else to keep in mind is that if you are buying a domain name just because it has a high PR, you have to be cautious. A lot of those wonderfully delicious backlinks will no longer be valid if you starting the site from scratch. The PR may decrease quickly. I read a post about that very situation for someone that had purchased domains with high PR, only to realize that the value was no longer present or was decreased.
What do you think ? How much importance do you place in PR levels ?
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I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Nice post. Google Page Rank is used by, as you said, advertisers. It’s also used by Pay Per Post and PayU2Blog type companies to pay the blogger with higher quality sponsored post jobs. Since Google reduced my PR4 to a PR0, I’ve come to see I can still earn 1-300 a month with the ads and offers I get and a PR0 doesn’t keep people away from my site, in fact, my traffic has grown to an average of 120 uniques a day. Conclusion? Only advertisers and probloggers need to be concerned with high PR. Thanks.
Damien,
Great to hear that you are generating that much per month with the ads and offers. Since your traffic is continuing to growth, it is inevitable that your income will also. It just proves once again that PR is not the only factor involved with the growth of blog. Thanks for visiting and I hope to hear from you soon on my blog.
Thanks for the comment Jason and for subscribing to my feed. I will ensure that I post on a regular basis.
Does your pr go down if your page is a backlink to a lower rated site?
xmarks,
It seems that if you have lots of links that leave your site that are to sites that are not at all related to your content, overtime it can affect your ranking. If you have a blogroll full of links that are completely different from your niche, it could reflect badly on your site.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If you become so afraid that you refuse to ever link to other sites, your content may begin to suffer. Adding links that enhance your content makes the experience more enjoyable for your readers and they will return.
If your ranking decreases slightly, it does not necessarily decrease the growth of your blog. The hits to your site will continue to increase as long as you continue to write good content.
Thanks for leaving a comment and visit again soon.