Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

Written by Steve Pronger
March 7, 2006

this thread morphed from Hyperlinks in the Old LED Archives which is located here.

"It's widely documented that you cannot check Google's backlink data with any degree of accuracy with that command." - Michael Martinez, LED 2110

Yes, agreed, that's why I can't draw any solid conclusions from my own link data. But if one person on this list - just one - can identify a backlink I'll be convinced that Google, if no other SE, is recognizing these archived pages as backlinks. I really want to be wrong on this one guys. There are hundreds of pages out there with my link on them. And yours!

"PR is not an indicator of value or quality. At least not for anyone who is serious about SEO."

I really only mentioned PageRank in the context that the LED archive index page, a high PR, did not seem to be passing any PR to the actual archived pages, due, I suspect, to the nature of those URLs. I wasn't making an argument for the value of PageRank in inbound links. But seeing as you brought it up, Google themselves state:

"Google's order of results is automatically determined by more than 100 factors, including our PageRank algorithm."

and...

"PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results."

Google's words, not mine. I agree that soliciting links on the basis of PageRank alone is no longer an effective or wise strategy, but dismissing the PR of a linking page as inconsequential is folly in my view.

True, I would rather have a link from a lower PR page that closely relates to the theme of my site, than from a higher PR but unrelated page. Relevancy should always be your first and over-riding consideration. But, all things being equal, I'll take the higher PR link, thanks very much.

Steve Pronger

stevepronger.com

"I wasn't making an argument for the value of PageRank in inbound links. But seeing as you brought it up, Google themselves state..." - Steve Pronger

You keep missing the point.

"I agree that soliciting links on the basis of PageRank alone is no longer an effective or wise strategy, but dismissing the PR of a linking page as inconsequential is folly in my view."

Since no one but Google knows which links are conferring PageRank and Reputation, it is now a complete waste of time for people to look at PR when seeking out links. There is no benefit to doing it, no value whatsoever, no reliable information, no effective gauge or measurement.

You cannot determine from a page's PR whether the outbound links are useful to anyone.

Michael Martinez