Google Page Rank - What's it worth to you?
A few months ago I found out that this site had a Google Page Rank (PR) of 3. Last week, it was 4. Is this good or bad? Not really understanding what a Google Page Rank was, I let my fingers do the walking and here is a simplified definition of Page Rank from Wikipedia: A Page Rank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this Page Rank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".
So I guess a higher page rank signifies a more linked to and trafficked (and perhaps better?) website. I 
checked out what some other of the bigger personal finance bloggers page ranks were (you can use this free tool or the Google toolbar to do that) and found that a PR4 is not too shabby. Page Rank isn't a linear scale either and moving from up the page rank scale is no easy feat as this cool graphic from Smashing Magazine shows. Leading news sites like cnn.com, bloomberg.com newyorktimes.com and even google.com only register 8 or 9 on the PR scale (I couldn't find one with a 10).
But the real question is does a higher Page Rank help me as a blogger? I don't know for sure. I have noticed an increase in search engine traffic over the last few months but that could just be the organic growth of my blog and the fact that the longer your blog is out there the more it gets indexed by search engines. One thing I have noticed though is that the number of requests for text link ads has increased dramatically. In fact I just closed an ad deal where an advertiser paid me more in one deal than I made in the first 4 months of blogging on this site. That was nice. I hope that they chose to advertise on my site because of the content and readership, but I know they did it in part to get linked from my PR4 ranked site and so build their own page rank. Google frowns on paid links and this could bring down my overall page rank in the longer term, but it is quite a profitable revenue source and as long as you are careful with the ads you pick the overall "negative" Page Rank effect can be balanced.
From searching the web I know PR is also a big deal from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective as well, and you can find tons of articles/forums on this topic, but most are far beyond my limited technical skills. So if I lose or fall to a lower PR, it won't worry me too much (or should it?). Red Stapler had an interesting perspective on gaining and losing google page rank and I agree with a number of points he has made. My goals of this blog are to write quality and interesting content while growing visitors, subscribers and my alternative revenue stream. So while a higher PR is good to have and benefit from, it is not a metric that I really target because I have little control over it. What are your thoughts?
Appearances this week
I participated in 3 blogging carnivals this week - Carnvial of Personal Finance (@ Girls Just Wanna Have Gunds), Festival of Frugality (@ Dollar Frugal) and the Festival of Stocks (@ Fat Pitch Financials). Thanks to all the hosts for including my articles and check out all the other great posts there.
> Characteristics required for successful blogging
> Beware Paid Links and use the "no follow" attribute
> RSS readership correlation with Blog Revenue
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October 12, 2008 12:40 PM
My understanding, which is far from complete, is that page rank was once very meaningful within the google ranking algorithm but is now more or less aesthetic; however, page rank does still seem to play a roll in how much advertisers are willing to pay to advertise on your site. So I don't think organic google traffic would necessarily decrease substantially just because your page rank were to decrease for some reason, but the amount of money advertisers would be willing to pay for the same level of traffic might. Problogger and Entrepreneurs-Journey have some pretty good articles on ths subject. Somebody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong because despite all this, I'm still wary of selling text links on my site for now.
October 12, 2008 2:38 PM
Actually I also think that Page Rank is more of a cosmetic thing as it is just one of the aspects that determine your position on certain keyword search terms in Google.
What's most important however is to write good quality content for people and not for google. Thus if you manage to get as many RSS subscribers as possible even if you end up last in google searches for everything, you'd still have an audience.
Kyle, actually you could sell text links and google is ok with it if they are "no-follow", which means that they don't add any page rank value to the sites that paid for the link. Google is ok if you sell links in order for others to get traffic, just not page rank..
October 12, 2008 3:16 PM
Thanks for the comments. From an article I read, a good equation showing page rank is:
Search Engine Listing = Relevance * Page rank. I don't know the proportions but I am sure relevance is more important.
I was wary of text links as well, but as dgi said, if you have the no-follow link attribute (see this related post - Beware Paid Links and use the "no follow" attribute ) then google does not penalize. That being said, most advertisers want the "do-follow" aspect so that they get the most bang for their buck.
Writing good quality content and ensuring it is well publicized are the key aspects of growing the revenue and readership of a blog.
October 13, 2008 12:02 AM
Thanks Andy, I read somewhere that google Adsense pays a higher percentage commission to pages with a higher PR. I'm not sure if that is true, but if it is, then your Adsense income may increase because of your increase in PR.
Also, other bloggers may be more willing to comment and get a link from your sight because of the higher PR.
Perhaps the biggest advantage is an increase in respect within the blogging community.
October 13, 2008 12:29 PM
well they have updated pagerank now
October 13, 2008 1:30 PM
Yeah I know you can sell no-follow links without penalty, but I haven't had any luck whatsoever selling those over at Linkworth. Seems like most advertisers want page rank, which is completely understandable. Maybe I should just try harder.
October 13, 2008 1:53 PM
Curt - Never thought about the Adsense perspective. Does make sense though....My adsenese income has gone up, but so have visitor numbers and have not really noticed higher EPC rates. Will review though. The social aspect of PR is also an interesting view and I agree. Perhaps I should take the PR more seriously after all. Like most things you only know the true value of something when it is gone or you don't have it anymore.
Kyle - I found most of my ad deals came from direct ad requests. For the more profitable ones, I did not implement a "do not follow" attribute, but I did check the site out and what other sites linked to it. They had a number of prominent links so I figured, that they were okay to go with. Linkworth is of limited use and they take much to big a commission.
October 14, 2008 7:40 AM
Great primer, really helped explain things!
December 12, 2008 2:48 PM
Pagerank these days is useless in a way. There is too many fakers out there with lots of junk to promote links to the search engines.
December 20, 2008 12:56 PM
Page rank is still something you'd rather have than not, but it's far from the only game in town these days.
I have websites/blogs with identical page rank that get literally 100-times different amount of daily traffic from Google (say 50 versus 5000). That's not the end of the story (you can rank high for a term but few people might type it) but some of these are in related fields.
I think Google has moved on. But as I say, I'd rather have it than not. :)
March 24, 2009 3:27 AM
Andy,
I think Google Pagerank just work for anyone who want to make money with Text links broker like Textlinkads.com. I am not sure that Google PR could effect our site position in search engine.
July 29, 2009 8:06 PM
hi.....
Page Rank is calculated by number of back links u get from other web site.And not when u give back link to others website.so u don't have to worry.u have got 952 back links that's really cool.just type link:http://www.savingtoinvest.com/ in Google.while commenting on others blog u should use no follow link,Now if Ur concern about the page rank then do one thing search for website which shows the back links to your website along with page rank,website with low page rank does affect your page rank if its not using no follow link on Ur URL,request the owner of the website to either remove Ur URL or put no follow tag,Google say higher the page rank more traffic u get from Google.But don't think it will make any difference to Ur blog as u write original content and Google loves that and so more traffic,Ur doing great job!
May God Bless You!
August 9, 2009 9:52 AM
Hi
May it be that google have changed the pr settings? My website is 2 month old, about 50 back links, and still 0 PR. Why is it?
http://www.ead.co.il
Thanks
August 22, 2009 2:47 PM
hey very good information.