Why does Higher Page Rank not allways give you better ranking?
 

Some sites with page rank of 6 dont have better listings than sites with page rank of 5

how does this happen???

PR has very little (if anything) to do with how a page ranks in the listings - Ive been trying to tell people that there are over 100 things on a webpage that affect your ranking in the listings - but then - everybody goes chasing that little green bar :)

yeah, but doesnt the little green bar go up when you do have the things that influence ranking.
for example if you have thousands of backlinks you page will rank better and the PR will also go up.

I basicly though of PR as an indicator of all the the factors that influence page rank combined.

dillinger - it used to do that :) nowadays it has been used by Google to kinda mislead people that were using it for buying backlinks - it really doesnt mean all those things anymore :) Its a shame too as it used to be such a good way of measuring pages changes - now you basically just have to watch the ranking in the index - another way you can look that still works is to look in the Google Directory - they still show a "relative PR" green bar in there next to the category listings that is a little better and accurate - the difference being that the green bar in the directory is split into 40(if my memory is still good LOL)divisions wheras the green bar on the toolbar just has 10

google directory? i never knew they had one......i will have to look into that

so.. what kind of SEO techniques are the most effective today?

you can call the reason for that relevancy. if only pr would count you could make a site with pr10 and with all keywords on it you want to be listed good with and then you will be listed good with it.

but you can see that that doesn't make a big sence. it makes more sence that sites are being listed for certain keywords that is relevant to them.

...that's that cleared up then |huh

aww c'mon Linkster that little green bar means everything |couch|

I have a non-adult site that was a PR 4 and was ranked "no where to be found". The last time Google updated PR was a couple months I believe..anyways, Google dropped me to a PR3 at that time, within the past couple weeks or so my site has mysteriously moved up in the top ten under quite a few keyword phrases. So that should tell you a little something about page rank...:)

Didn't Google say that the Pr measurement was just for "entertainment", and they implied that it was just to encourage people to install their toolbar. :)

PR measurement in the past (at least in the Google Directory where it is still shown) was really a good measure of your "page rank" which has always been an important part of the factors leading to good placing in their search engine.
For a while the little green bar in the toolbar did show it accurately as well, just as the little backlinks feature showed most of your important people that were linking to you. That also now has been made inaccurate on purpose by Google, to make sure that you cant use it to really measure anything.

I feel that PR and SERPs are no longer related even in the slightest. I am seeing plenty of PR0 sites with good serps, plenty of PR4 and 5 sites that are nowhere to be found.

Google is playing with you :-)

Alex

I agree with alex...What get's me the most is a lot of webmasters use PR as the only determining factor as to which sites they will trade links.

I have to admit that I use to do the same thing. I am willing to trade with anyone but If someone wanted a hardlink trade on my index page I wouldn't trade unless they had equal or higher page rank, which is ridiculous in my opinion.

However I do believe that site relevancy still matters. But that green bar don't mean jack as far as SE ranking is concern.

I know this to be a fact because my PR3 site, which used to be a PR5 is now at the top of google and yahoo under many kwf's. As a PR5 it wasn't even in the top gazillion. (I think I said that already somewhere on the board...:) )

So anyone want a hardlink trade with a PR2 site that's ranked #9 on yahoo under "free teen sex movies"
and in the top 10 under a lot of other kwf's?
http://www.sex-free-teen.com

Well - just to confuse the issue for everyone :)
Maybe I ought to explain some differences here as a lot of people use two things interchangebly that really aren't the same thing

PR - as measured by the google toolbar and next to the ranked listings in the Google directory are not a visual display of a web pages "Page Rank" - they are a measure of googles little having fun wit webmasters toy

Page Rank - This is what Google really uses in its algorithm to decide where a web page should rank in the listings (SERPs) - and is based on over 100 factors from on-page things to who links to the page etc. It is also the complete basis of the whole mathematical model that the boys from Stanford wrote up back in their college days and is now called Google - and will always be the most important thing for ranking - however the importance of one of those over 100 things can be adjusted in the algorithm if Google sees fit - and they have proved that many times.

Hope I didnt confuse the issue too much :)

Presmar - most of us when doing link trades dont even look at the toolbar anymore - as a matter of fact most dont even have it installed LOL - The nice thing about Google is that they have always rewarded sites that do what we used to call in the old days - plain ole traffic trades using hard links - they love them

But, but...isn't it like a penis? Bigger is better? Right?

I think people rely on it so much because it is the only easily quantifiable number that seems to show how important the page is.

SERPs are a concept that is harder to comprehend and harder still to measure easily.

Until a webmaster gets a good education from message boards and the like, he/she is going focus on something with a name like PageRank. I know I did. (I used to keep track of my Alexa ratings too).

I agree that they do - I only try to preach that they shouldnt because it doesnt even represent page rank anymore - it has nothing whatsoever to do with rank for anything - its just a nice green bar that Google will randomly assign a number to now - Ive seen guys show up with a PR8 on that indicator starting a site from scratch - and think that they have some huge accomplishment - when in reality their real PR is around 1

Haha, yep, I've seen that before.

It's an old trick too, just a 301 redirect trick to get an instant PR10 for a new website.