The Google Toolbar PageRank Demystified

nywanna writes "SEO is an extremely unpredictable aspect of running an online business. Every month the rules change slightly, and with every rule change we receive new bad information from speculators and those who spew nothing but conjecture. David Harry looks at one of the greatest Google misconceptions and bits of misinformation that exists right now: This brings me to the greatest mythological creature to roam the Google landscape since 'the sandbox'; The Google Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) system. While the jury may still be out on the 'sandbox,' I am here to slay the beast that is the TBPR, right here, right now."

Comments

What's SEO?

[ebcdic]

Evidently readers of the referenced article are expected to be familiar with this acronym, but why is Slashdot assuming that its readers are?

Re:What's SEO?

[truthsearch]

Geeks are expected to inherently know the definition of all technology-related acronyms.

Search Engine Optimization

Basically it means trying to get your web pages listed as highly as possible on search engine result pages (a.k.a. SERPs)

Of course not

[Billosaur]

As penned by SE Guru Mike Grehan,

"Can you imagine some surfer finding the digital camera of his dreams at a knock-down bargain price but refusing to buy it because the page it's on only has a PR of one? I don't think so."

No, but I can imagine a surfer finding the camera of his dreams and buying it from some schlock electronics outfit with an artificially high page rank.

Page Rank seems to work on the premise that the more a site is linked to, the more valuable it is. So if five million people link to a white supremacist site, that means there's valuable content there, right?

This is where Google's power is diluted and why a lot of the searches I do seem to come up with pretty crappy results. PageRank is pointless, if only because a) actually useful sites may very well not get linked to very much, as no one wants the sites overrun by the whole Internet or b) uselss sites with drivel for content may be over-linked because a few million idiots think that the content is the word-of-the-lord.

What is needed is a personal page-ranking system -- a central repository where people can rate websites based on factors that matter (ease of use, content, etc.), kind of like the Zagat guide to web sites. It's not enough to blindly search for any site that links to the data I want; I need it to link to site that have the data I want and have it a useful/easy-to-find format.

Re:Useless Search Engine Optimization Blather

[nadamsieee]

This guy said nothing in a long tedious way.

He should be in marketing... oh, wait... nevermind.

Best way to get ranked higher...

[blake213]

Create a useful and unique web page/business, and you will appear at the top of the list. Anything else is just cheating, and it's exactly what Google is trying to prevent.

Do I understand this argument correctly?

[Darkforge]

The gist of this article seems to be:

Hello, I'm a sleazy SEO with poor grammar and spelling. It's my job to trick Google (using link spam) into thinking that a web site is more important than it actually is.

Now, many of my customers think that the Google Toolbar will tell them their PageRank, and that this will tell them how good a job I'm doing. I wish they would stop looking at this number, because using that they can see how useless my services are and how effectively Google is combatting my tactics.

Here, let me quote a few irrelevant remarks out of context: "If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit."

In short, don't pay me to raise your PageRank, [because only improving site quality can do that,] but instead pay me for "targetted traffic", which you can't measure, but is really much more important! Yuk yuk yuk!