Google PR - Confusing As Hell!

[mneylon]

I was browsing a few of my sites earlier today and I was struck by one thing - their Google PR makes no sense at all!

Some of the sites have PR that makes sense eg. this site. It's got plenty of links in from various sites / blogs etc., so I'd more or less expect it to have a reasonable PR.

Other sites, however, make no sense at all.

They have little or no inbound links and my promotion efforts were minimal ie. I probably didn't do anything at all - yet they're still getting a PR of 3 or higher.

Has anyone else seen this sort of weirdness?

 

[lato]

Timing is everything, by the looks of it and as limited as it is.
You'll be fine.

 

[RedCardinal]

PR 1-4 is just your average site with a few links. Just one or two decent links can get or 2 or 3. Anything below 5 I treat with a pinch of salt.

I think the issues with this site came about after moving from subdomain and not redirecting the spiders. Remember when you erased the entire entry for forums.search.ie (that was where you had this forum?). Well I reckon that caused a lot of grief.

 

[mneylon]

Richard - I'm not concerned about this site - I'm more interested in the other ones...

 

[RedCardinal]

In what sense? I wouldn't worry about PR at all, especially if its in the lower ranges. It's very easy to get PR3 or 4. One or two decent links should get you a 3. Likewise, a 100 - 150 [low quality] directory links will probably get you PR4.

That said, just one PR 4 link from a page that links to no one else could get you a 3 or a 4.

TBH I just ignore the PR toolbar most of the time.

 

[paul]

Is PR a mugs game ? Or at least chasing better PR values ?

Does anyone know if your AdSense revenues can be effected by your PR ? i.e. higher paying ads for higher PR sites ?

Plus I guess buying TLA will only effect you in the short term, as in once the ads are removed you will slip down the ladder again.

The more I think about chasing PR the more depressed I get !

 

[RedCardinal]

I think I'll have to do a blog post about this. What most people don't realise is that PR != SERP ranking. If you concentrate on ranking well for your desired keywords and then give the user what they want I can guarantee that your PR will increase. Happy users will leave links to you so that others can also find you. Then your PR will rise.

As for TLA, well lets just say that many of the sites listed in their inventory may no longer pass any 'juice'. Google now have a kill switch and it is very difficult to figure out which sites have been killed.

If you want to buy links I would go private and underground.

 

[Gavin]

The more I think about chasing PR the more depressed I get !

I gave up chasing PR as it was taking up too much time. Going spare watching the Google D.C's play games with the PR. Richard, you got in one by saying to rank for the keywords and have the content visitors expect.

They have little or no inbound links and my promotion efforts were minimal ie. I probably didn't do anything at all - yet they're still getting a PR of 3 or higher.

I have seen this a few times myself. One site that I work on had a PR5 with 3 back links showing in Yahoo. Looking at it now it has 35 back links with a PR4.