The first time I heard and came to know about PR and what it is, I found that my then 8-month-old blog has PR2. I guess PR2 was reason enough for me to get ecstatic about, newbie as I was (and still am btw). I was therefore wondering why some folks write about not caring whether they get a PR boost or not. In fact, some go as far as declaring that PR is useless and a nuisance.
As far as I know, an increased PR means a lot, some of the reasons being:
- It serves as an authority index as far as google is concerned. And considering where google stands in the search engine race, I suppose everyone should agree.
- Advertisers tend to go for sites with higher PR. What little experience I have in this area confirms this ‘fact’.
- It reflects on the blogger’s/webmaster’s level of SEO skill.
Among the posts of bloggers who expressed their thoughts about Google’s PR being not necessary, these are the common factors they cite:
- Google is playing god and change their criteria at their whim to make us feel like we are helplessly at their mercy.
- Alexa ranking is a better indicator than Google PR.
- Google’s algorithm is flawed.
- Traffic is more important and we can get traffic without Google’s PR.
- PR is nothing more than a number.
While they certainly have a point in these areas, I found that, more often than not, they were motivated to write about it because they were either left out or, worse, demoted in the latest PR update. When Google thus found my blog not worthy of an increased PR rank in the latest update, the immediate thought was, “finally, it’s my turn to post an ‘I don’t care about PR’ article”. 🙂
In writing such an article, I guess I would be inclined to say the same things the others have been saying, but first I have to admit that if I were Google, I myself wouldn’t want to give this blog a PR boost at this time. In my comments in other blogs about Google matters, I always iterate that google is not perfect. It makes mistakes. Well, in their latest update, Google didn’t make a mistake this time in withholding a PR boost for this blog. Would you consider a blog that is barely able to output 8 posts a month worthy of an additional PR?
Now, what should my reasons be for saying I don’t care about Google PR? Err…sourgraping?
Seriously, I think I should wait till I get myself out of the ‘newbie’ sandbox and till I get a lot of experience before venturing into a discussion concerning the downside of Google’s PR ranking. For now, I still think that whatever stinks about Google’s PR algorithm is still outweighed by its perceived benefits. Some of the few business sites I have, by the way, despite being snobbed in the latest PR update, remained where they are at the SERPs and the revenue they’re bringing did not change at all.