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06.10.09 Understanding And Gaging Your Site's Rank  By
Barry Welford The SEO world continues to be shaken by the hints offered by Matt Cutts last week on the nofollow tag and PageRank Sculpting. Many seem shaken but perhaps people have made assumptions about PageRank that are not true. It is difficult to prove how things really work since Google remains cagey on what really happens. Here we offer a Null Hypothesis, a simple explanation, that people may wish to consider. This should only be replaced by a more complex view, when that can be proven to be better. Introduction Andy Beard is a keen observer of the Google scene and poses the key question following the Matt Cutts revelations last week: Is PageRank Sculpting Dead & Can Comments Kill Your PageRank? Has Google in one quick swipe removed all benefit of Dynamic Linking (old school term) or PageRank sculpting (when it became "trendy"), and potentially caused massive penalties for sites nofollowing links for user generated content and comments? Important articles he cites on this are: • Google Loses "Backwards Compatibility" On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting • Google (Maybe) Changes How the PageRank Algorithm Handles Nofollow • No Clarification Forthcoming from Google on Nofollow & PageRank Flow • Is What's Good For Google, Good For SEO Not everyone is so concerned and Andrew Goodman frankly states, PageRank Sculpting is Dead? Good Riddance.
How Is PageRank Calculated The Google website is strangely obscure on how PageRank is calculated. There are a few explanations in Google Answers (no longer supported) by others on such issues as My Page Rank and Page Rank Definition - Proof of convergence and uniqueness. Phil Craven offers a reasonably straightforward account in Google's PageRank Explained and how to make the most of it. That includes the following: Notes: Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. The KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Sweetheart) The problem in trying to estimate how the Google PageRank process works is that PageRank is only one of over 100 or more factors involved in how web pages rank in keyword searches. Any attempt to prove a given assumption about PageRank involves a typical statistical analysis where one tries to infer an explanation from somewhat fuzzy data. That is where the KISS principle comes in. In such a situation, we should perhaps rely on the approach favored by some great minds. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Barry Welford, President of SMM Internet Marketing Consultants works with business owners and senior management on Internet Marketing strategy and action plans to grow their companies. He is a moderator at the Cre8asite Forums and writes on Business and the Internet in four blogs, Senior Money Memos, BPWrap, StayGoLinks and The Other Bloke's Blog. |
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