A quick tutorial on PR for the new people...

[vrocks]

I keep getting requests from people with PR0 and they want a link from my PR2 and PR3 sites.

So they request:
PR3 => PR0
PR2 => PR0
PR2 => PR0
PR3 => PR0

So I counter with:
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR3
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR3
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR2
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR2

And then they leave me a comment that they don't think this is fair and no longer want a trade. I ask them why not? They answer with my PR3's and PR2's have 200 - 300 outbound links. They only have 25 to 50 on their PR0... So they don't think it is a fair trade. There will be no link juice left to make it worth their while.

Well, let me explain something here. PR works like the Richter Scale (RS) for earthquakes. So, a 1.1 is ten times a 1 earthquake. A 1.2 is 10 times 1.1 and therefor 100 times a one. Or:
1.1 = 1 x 10
1.2 = 1.1 x 10 or 1 x 100
1.3 = 1.2 x 10 or 1 x 1000
1.4 = 1.3 x 10 or 1 x 10000

PR works in a similar manner and if you read the patent on it, it says so right in the patent. Though the scale isn't as drastic. Therefor...

If you have a PR0 site with 25 outbound links, it is not worth more PR wise than a PR3 with 200 outbound links... To start off, the PR3 isn't a PR0 x 3, it is a PR0 x 3,000. So do the math assuming the PR0 is actually PR 0.3.

So a link to my PR3 from your PR0 is worth .012 in PR.
A link from my PR3 to your PR0 is worth 15 in PR.

Notice your link into my site is almost worthless to me so I am going to ask for 5 or 6 links from your PR0 into one of my low PR sites where .012 x 6 = .072 and as you can see, your links are still not worth a whole lot to even my PR0 site!

However, my 1 link into your PR0 site was enough to multiple that .3 x 15 = 4.5 which is enough to boost you to single digits or PR1.

So... If you are going to ask for a link from my PR3 sites, have some sites with PR or expect me to ask for a link from 30 of your PR0 sites.

If you don't understand that PR is a compounding scale, I feel really sad for you are wish you good luck in your endeavors.

To put it in real world perspective... Notice getting from PR0 to PR1 is very easy. Notice getting to 2 is a bit more difficult but still pretty easy. Notice that getting to 3 is much harder and getting to 4 is extremely hard, especially for a porn site. And so on...

Also notice that Playboy is a PR6. Almost unheard of for a porn site. But it has links into it from PR7 and PR8 pages on very large mainstream sites like newspapers, wine and spirits makers running cross promotions, etc... It also has links into it form millions of affiliate pages.

[Relentless]

PR is one of the most highly overrated and frequently misunderstood parts of SEO. It no longer gets updated nearly as often as it would need to for it to be an accurate measure of a site presently. Google made the internal decision that giving people a very useful measuring device to determine favorability was only useful for helping people to game the system... so they stopped making the PR measure as helpful as it once was.

By all means a high PR is a 'good thing' but there are far more important things to consider these days. There are many PR1 and PR2 sites more desirable for links than many PR3 and PR4 sites. I would gladly take a link from a PR0 site that ranks for terms in its niche and updates frequently with quality original material (not RSS feeds and a hot morphing mess or some tube script whitelabel) over a PR3 site that looks like a link farm made with no design, no text, 100s of outbound links and is relying on the fact that Google hasn't bothered to change it's PR score even though Google has already taken away all its traffic, weight and SERPs. I've seen PR1 sites that get more organic traffic than PR4 sites, I've seen sites with large traffic that Alexa ignores and sites with almost no traffic that Alexa loves.

The easy days of PR are over (and have been for a while). If webmasters arent actually visiting the sites, reading them, seeing if they update, seeing if they are indexed etc... they aren't doing the work they should be doing and there are plenty of PR3 sites out there that simply won't send much value any more... or PR0 sites that you will ignore to your own detriment.

Just my 2 cents...

[vrocks]

PR is one of the most highly overrated and frequently misunderstood parts of SEO. It no longer gets updated nearly as often as it would need to for it to be an accurate measure of a site presently. Google made the internal decision that giving people a very useful measuring device to determine favorability was only useful for helping people to game the system... so they stopped making the PR measure as helpful as it once was.

By all means a high PR is a 'good thing' but there are far more important things to consider these days. There are many PR1 and PR2 sites more desirable for links than many PR3 and PR4 sites. I would gladly take a link from a PR0 site that ranks for terms in its niche and updates frequently with quality original material (not RSS feeds and a hot morphing mess or some tube script whitelabel) over a PR3 site that looks like a link farm made with no design, no text, 100s of outbound links and is relying on the fact that Google hasn't bothered to change it's PR score even though Google has already taken away all its traffic, weight and SERPs. I've seen PR1 sites that get more organic traffic than PR4 sites, I've seen sites with large traffic that Alexa ignores and sites with almost no traffic that Alexa loves.

The easy days of PR are over (and have been for a while). If webmasters arent actually visiting the sites, reading them, seeing if they update, seeing if they are indexed etc... they aren't doing the work they should be doing and there are plenty of PR3 sites out there that simply won't send much value any more... or PR0 sites that you will ignore to your own detriment.

Just my 2 cents...

You brought up some very valid points. I have tons of PR0 - PR1 sites with solid rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Many of them rank better then my PR2 and PR3 sites. Then again, the main reason many of them rank is their links from my PR2 and PR3 sites...

[Relentless]

You brought up some very valid points. I have tons of PR0 - PR1 sites with solid rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Many of them rank better then my PR2 and PR3 sites. Then again, the main reason many of them rank is their links from my PR2 and PR3 sites...

yeah, I don't think we disagree.

It's just that what PR is ... is definitely not what PR used to be.
Frankly I like it much better this way than the old way. This way favors the webmasters who roll up their sleeves and do some actual work investigating sites or building sites worth visiting.

One bit of info I don't mind sharing which I have tested VERY thoroughly...
You can bet your house that the algo credits ranked sites that link to lower ranked sites IF those lower ranked sites go on to blossom later. For example, if your PR3 site links to a high quality PR0 hand-written site which updates often and that PR0 later becomes a PR2... your PR3 gets a benefit as a thank you for helping people to 'find the good new site.' Feel free to test it yourself. So the PR3 to PR0 link can be very beneficial for both sides but ONLY if the PR0 continues to grow and prosper.

[vrocks]

You brought up some very valid points. I have tons of PR0 - PR1 sites with solid rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Many of them rank better then my PR2 and PR3 sites. Then again, the main reason many of them rank is their links from my PR2 and PR3 sites...

yeah, I don't think we disagree.

It's just that what PR is ... is definitely not what PR used to be.
Frankly I like it much better this way than the old way. This way favors the webmasters who roll up their sleeves and do some actual work investigating sites or building sites worth visiting.

One bit of info I don't mind sharing which I have tested VERY thoroughly...
You can bet your house that the algo credits ranked sites that link to lower ranked sites IF those lower ranked sites go on to blossom later. For example, if your PR3 site links to a high quality PR0 hand-written site which updates often and that PR0 later becomes a PR2... your PR3 gets a benefit as a thank you for helping people to 'find the good new site.' Feel free to test it yourself. So the PR3 to PR0 link can be very beneficial for both sides but ONLY if the PR0 continues to grow and prosper.

Yes, you become an authority. This can be very beneficial! A good example of this would be opening a new TGP (thinking circa 2005) and you give free 1 way links into several large TGP's and guess what? Google considers you an authority and ranks you up with those sites somewhere on page 1. Makes no sense for the strugglers who busted ass to any hit #8 and here you are brand new at #5. If you update your site with textual content and not just links and pictures, Google will move you up. Add links into you and the strange thing is that Google puts you at perhaps #2 in 3 months and it took the old #2 years to get there only to have you take it over because Google thinks you are an authority on Teen TGP or whatever keyword you are ranking for... So not adding links can actually hurt you.


Now about the slowness of Google to update PR...

Somebody might create a SWEET blog with 4 updates a day at 400 to 800 words of sweet content. They get links and give links and keep getting turned down for links because somebody says, "Well, you have a PR0 with 60 outbound links and I have a PR1 with only 25, sorry, get some PR first." But what that PR1 guy didn't know is Google already considers the PR0 a PR2! But just hasn't updated the PR index to reflect its new position.

[Relentless]

Somebody might create a SWEET blog with 4 updates a day at 400 to 800 words of sweet content. They get links and give links and keep getting turned down for links because somebody says, "Well, you have a PR0 with 60 outbound links and I have a PR1 with only 25, sorry, get some PR first." But what that PR1 guy didn't know is Google already considers the PR0 a PR2! But just hasn't updated the PR index to reflect its new position.

Exactly. And the reverse is equally true.

People have an old PR2 or PR3 domain that has not updated in a year or more. They sell the domain to someone wanting to buy a PR3 domain. The new guy gets the domain and finds out it doesnt rank for much of anything, has no organic traffic and that Google simply hasn't changed the PR from 3 to 0 even though the site really is no better than a 0 in actuality. So... what does the new owner do?

They HURRY to get trades with as many webmasters as they can find by offering their 'PR3' site as bait to get quality links back to their main sites. In the span of only a month they manage to add 100s of links and then when Google finally gets around to updating PR the site becomes a PR0 link farm with 100s of out links and 0 weight. I have watched that happen too many times to 'trust' PR alone these days.

There is no substitute for actually going to a site and looking at it with your own eyes to assign a WR (your own WebmasterRank of what you think the site is worth).

WR > PR

[highestdef]

Excellent conversation and some great info I hope everyone using Linkspun gets around to reading. I have two completely hand-written sites that update daily in my profile that are both brand new PR0 if someone wants to link up and get credit for discovering a hot new site

[DaCaptain]

highestdef I don't see any sites in your profile.

[highestdef]

highestdef I don't see any sites in your profile.

Really? http://www.linkspun.com/profile.php?profileID=284
I have a bunch hidden but there's 3 visible sites including the 2 hand-written ones

[onmaso]

PR is quite important, but.

Site with frequent updates, and people coming from Google is what's the best.

[willwank]

Super explanation of PR scaling. Great post vrocks!

However, to balance things a bit I'd love to see some functionality for sem/keyword/ip data inside Linkspun. Two new columns in the interface would be nice. One for IP and one with a direct query to semrush or similar. I know most don't have paid sem account somewhere but a free lookup gives at least some quality indication and relevance. 'course I can copy and paste domains but when the list gets long I'd love to have a direct query link.

[jdoughs]

Yes indeed, we actually have the IP data now, and you can search by IP, you can see it by searching a set of numbers like .123 and it will return sites on that block or matching.

We will incorporate it into results and I've also been looking at a few decent API's/Plugin's that we can get some other data from.

[vrocks]

This new IP check is nice...

And if anyone cares to notice... ALL but 6 of my sites are on different IP's and different class C's...

[hcdyker]

In fairness - pr is the most missunderstood element of webmastery -
Some very, very good points made here which are very relevant -

However, having several sites that have worked the google way for a number of years and many carrying 100 or so links - And, with sites showing different text everytime the serps sniff - It is bloody frustrating here getting link trades turned down because of those links... I reken no one has actually bothered to see how good some of the back links are - Of course, some are crap and others average. Which tends to even things out.

I get between 30 and 50k of se traffic a week, so must have been doing something right over the past few years -

[kinkybrian]

My blog went from PR 0 to PR1 a couple weeks ago, but gets almost no traffic at all from Google. It does get some traffic from Yahoo though.

http://swallow-my-cum.com/cgc/

[pr0nto]

The nitpicker in me has to point out, since nobody else did, that the Richter scale example was incorrect. A 2.0 earthquake (not a 1.1) is 10 times as strong as a 1.0. A 3.0 earthquake is 100 times stronger than a 1.0, a 4.0 1000 times stronger than a 1.0, etc rather than increasing in magnitude 10x with each 0.1 increase.

[vrocks]

Yes... you got me there...

[fixxxme]

I keep getting requests from people with PR0 and they want a link from my PR2 and PR3 sites.

So they request:
PR3 => PR0
PR2 => PR0
PR2 => PR0
PR3 => PR0

So I counter with:
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR3
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR3
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR2
PR0 + PR0 + PR0 => PR2

And then they leave me a comment that they don't think this is fair and no longer want a trade. I ask them why not? They answer with my PR3's and PR2's have 200 - 300 outbound links. They only have 25 to 50 on their PR0... So they don't think it is a fair trade. There will be no link juice left to make it worth their while.

Well, let me explain something here. PR works like the Richter Scale (RS) for earthquakes. So, a 1.1 is ten times a 1 earthquake. A 1.2 is 10 times 1.1 and therefor 100 times a one. Or:
1.1 = 1 x 10
1.2 = 1.1 x 10 or 1 x 100
1.3 = 1.2 x 10 or 1 x 1000
1.4 = 1.3 x 10 or 1 x 10000

PR works in a similar manner and if you read the patent on it, it says so right in the patent. Though the scale isn't as drastic. Therefor...

If you have a PR0 site with 25 outbound links, it is not worth more PR wise than a PR3 with 200 outbound links... To start off, the PR3 isn't a PR0 x 3, it is a PR0 x 3,000. So do the math assuming the PR0 is actually PR 0.3.

So a link to my PR3 from your PR0 is worth .012 in PR.
A link from my PR3 to your PR0 is worth 15 in PR.

Notice your link into my site is almost worthless to me so I am going to ask for 5 or 6 links from your PR0 into one of my low PR sites where .012 x 6 = .072 and as you can see, your links are still not worth a whole lot to even my PR0 site!

However, my 1 link into your PR0 site was enough to multiple that .3 x 15 = 4.5 which is enough to boost you to single digits or PR1.

So... If you are going to ask for a link from my PR3 sites, have some sites with PR or expect me to ask for a link from 30 of your PR0 sites.

If you don't understand that PR is a compounding scale, I feel really sad for you are wish you good luck in your endeavors.

To put it in real world perspective... Notice getting from PR0 to PR1 is very easy. Notice getting to 2 is a bit more difficult but still pretty easy. Notice that getting to 3 is much harder and getting to 4 is extremely hard, especially for a porn site. And so on...

Also notice that Playboy is a PR6. Almost unheard of for a porn site. But it has links into it from PR7 and PR8 pages on very large mainstream sites like newspapers, wine and spirits makers running cross promotions, etc... It also has links into it form millions of affiliate pages.

U r almost right (excepting the analogy with Richter scale).
The simple fact is that us (the PR0), can grow with your help and our effort. If no one with PR1-6 will trade with us wee will be at PR0 for ever...
So, do not be angry at our requests.

[jdoughs]

This is sort of like saying "I could make $1,000 a day if you just do it for me"

I understand that PR (or traffic, or Alexa, or sales) won't just grow by itself, but it's not anyone elses job to make your sites better, or to increase their ranks

"Growing Page Rank" is a pretty easy thing to do, it just requires some effort, but if a webmaster won't do that effort for himself, why should anyone else do it for him?

U r almost right (excepting the analogy with Richter scale).
The simple fact is that us (the PR0), can grow with your help and our effort. If no one with PR1-6 will trade with us wee will be at PR0 for ever...
So, do not be angry at our requests.

[fixxxme]

This is sort of like saying "I could make $1,000 a day if you just do it for me"

I understand that PR (or traffic, or Alexa, or sales) won't just grow by itself, but it's not anyone elses job to make your sites better, or to increase their ranks

"Growing Page Rank" is a pretty easy thing to do, it just requires some effort, but if a webmaster won't do that effort for himself, why should anyone else do it for him?

U r almost right (excepting the analogy with Richter scale).
The simple fact is that us (the PR0), can grow with your help and our effort. If no one with PR1-6 will trade with us wee will be at PR0 for ever...
So, do not be angry at our requests.

Hi
i have a tube site and 6 month ago i have hired two companies (Seo) and they work since then at directories submission, social bookmarking, forum posting, blog commenting, and still nothing....so it is not such a easy work. Link exchange is the next step, after that ...i don`t know.

[oilreg]

This is sort of like saying "I could make $1,000 a day if you just do it for me"

I understand that PR (or traffic, or Alexa, or sales) won't just grow by itself, but it's not anyone elses job to make your sites better, or to increase their ranks

"Growing Page Rank" is a pretty easy thing to do, it just requires some effort, but if a webmaster won't do that effort for himself, why should anyone else do it for him?

U r almost right (excepting the analogy with Richter scale).
The simple fact is that us (the PR0), can grow with your help and our effort. If no one with PR1-6 will trade with us wee will be at PR0 for ever...
So, do not be angry at our requests.

Hi
i have a tube site and 6 month ago i have hired two companies (Seo) and they work since then at directories submission, social bookmarking, forum posting, blog commenting, and still nothing....so it is not such a easy work. Link exchange is the next step, after that ...i don`t know.

in your special case its quite easy why you CAN NOT succeed, look at what you are going for, for the term, Porn Tube, seriously to go for that keyword is a lost battle right from the start

[oilreg]

just that you get some figures, i am ranking on page 1 on google for a very much searched word, its not free porn thou, it took me 6 million backlinks to get there, so the term porn tube will cost you pretty similar to get on page 1 of google, and then we have to be clear about that,
looking at page1 of google means
1st entry gets 50% of all searched traffic
2nd entry 25%% of all searched traffic
3rd entry gets 10% of all searched traffic
4-10 entry well the minor part
11-XXX gets a hit now and then
so you might get a better approach on going micro niched, but going for terms like
free porn, free sex, porn tube,
is pretty stupid cause you cannot win that game unless you have a shitload of ressources you can freely spent the next years, also be aware that your competition doesnt sleep for the next 2 years, .......... well just my 2 cents

[sharphead]

All my PR0 sites are now just coming out of the sandbox with Google and getting some nice SERPs. PR means next to nothing, so if someone with a PR3 asks me to link back 5 of my sites, I usually don't have an issue with this at all. It's *JUST* a text link, i'm more interested in where the money is... and that's TRAFFIC.

PR is for webmasters and if your trying to sell off. Surfers don't use it and don't care.