Comments on: What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters

By: Loughborough

Loughborough — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:58:14 +0000

A nice summary of how page rank works. Presumably though it is a moving target as people try to optimise their site to get ahead of the competition.

By: MrRoy

MrRoy — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:37:43 +0000

Hi Danny

Your article came at a time when the toolbar PR update has just happened. Great coincidence. :)

Cheers
Nirupam

By: Halfdeck

Halfdeck — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:23:25 +0000

“High PageRank does NOT guarantee a high search ranking for any particular term. If it did, then PR10 sites like Adobe would always show up for any search you do. They don’t.”

I ran a relevance VS importance test here:

http://www.seo4fun.com/blog/2007/03/20/free-seo-course-offering-expert-training-overestimating-domain-authority.html

My conclusion: when relevance (as determined by authoritative/trusted IBL anchor text) is low, PageRank/domain authority comes into play. When relevance is high, it leaves other signals in the dust.

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:08:33 +0000

That nofollow was on a link to Google Librarian Central, and I think it had nofollow because I copied it out of a comment, where all the links get nofollows. I didn’t notice it was there, in short. I removed that now.

By: Jill

Jill — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:52:52 +0000

Slightly off topic, but I’m curious as to why you no-followed the link to Google, but no other links?

By: Sandpetra

Sandpetra — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:38:34 +0000

How long did that take you ? :)

By: MrRoy

MrRoy — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:31:29 +0000

Danny

Thanks for the reply.
Keep up your good work :)

Cheers
Nirupam

By: Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:18:39 +0000

Danny, many thanks for adding those extra details to the article. This is a great resource, and judging from the comments already, it looks like this will be a popular one. :)

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:01:18 +0000

Danny: “The bigger point was that I was more strongly saying that none of these types of analysis are that useful in my view, working off a paper from 1998.”

Fair enough.

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:24:39 +0000

Eric, Alexa’s rankings are based on people who visit you and have the Alexa toolbar. Google’s rankings come from counting up link votes. Two compeltely different methods, so you just can’t compare them. Perhaps, for example, lots of people come to a page but for whatever reason, there are few links pointing at it. Alexa would say it was great; Google, not so much.

Feedthebot, just playing with you. For the record, I have both read and blogged about it :)

Michael, Phil’s papers is one of the earliest out there trying to play with the math and is notable from that account. Didn’t say it was correct, only that some might want to check it out. The bigger point was that I was more strongly saying that none of these types of analysis are that useful in my view, working off a paper from 1998.