Did anyone else happen to read this article? It argues that with the Google IPO looming, and the PR technology owned by Stanford, the royalties to use it would become usurious, therefor Google is diminishing the importance of page rank.

here is the link:

the decreasing importance of page rank

Gas Scooter Guy

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Hey scoot,

I agree completely that the importance of pagerank is diminishing. in fact, i've made several posts on this forum stating my belief that pagerank has already been removed from the algorithm as a direct ranking criteria, and now should only be used as a indication of the popularity of a site for linking.

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Bob:

If I understand you right, then the usefullness of the rank is only to target sites that would drive traffic to you from them, as opposed to leveraging PR into a SERPS, thereby using google as the middle man. did I get that right?

Gas Scooter Guy

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I'm a little confused about your question, so please correct me if i don't give you the answer you're looking for.

The main reason I use pr is to measure my competitors in a field i'm chasing after. Although PR isn't a direct measurement, it still gives me a rough idea as to how many targeted backlinks a site/page is receiving, and therefore, how competitive the industry is. I like to use pr as just another tool in my seo toolbox - like the digitalpoint tools, and the tools on the seo-guy site.
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Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

Page Rank has never equated to search placement. It's not even clear that in itself it was ever a large direct factor--or, arguably, a direct factor at all--in placement. Digging up very high-ranking but low-PR sites, even for decent search terms, has never been difficult.

Notice, though, the word "direct" repeated above. PR does have an indirect effect. Search placement depends on many things, in a complex way, but without doubt backlinks were and remain critically important. But backlinks are not counted "bare"--they are clearly to some degree weighted by the PR of the source page.

So your pages' PR depends in large part on the number and weight of your backlinks, while your actual search placement depends in some clearly lesser part on those things. There is a connection, but how strong that connection--and whether it is changing--remain part of The Great And Powerful Google's secrets.

For myself, I wouldn't attach too much significance to Stanford U's holding the actual patent on PR. Stanford ain't no buncha dummies, and doubtless they too have heard the fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs. Were they to get greedy to the point that they were materially impacting Google's revenue, Google would just stop using PR, and Stanford knows that well enough. So Google likely can and will continue to use PR to some extent in its figurings.

I would reckon that the PR of one's own pages as an indicator of your weighted backlinks is more important in proportion to the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. I have had, and probably still have, some PR0 linkless pages that search-place high, sometimes #1, for their chief topic (typically a lesser but not unknown author). It's no miracle, or wizardly SEO, just a matter of serious on-page focus on the topic.

The "links-are-king" school mocks the "content-is-king" school, and to some extent vice versa, but in the end both are important.

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I agree with you and SEO Bob. PR is important in its own context, but it is not near as important as SERP placement on those kw's that convert to $$. I primarily use PR as a tool also. It is only one indicator among many about the competition for kw's I am going after. It gives me a feel for how much SEO and horsepower I am going to need to place well in the SERPs for my targeted KW's.

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