There are important other reasons for high rankings such as the link reputation and the keywords on your page… but the PageRank of the page also plays a role in determining where your pages rank in the search engines for particular search phrases.

As the PageRank scale is logarithmic, there is very little difference between PR0 and PR2.

Type “business” into Google and the first 5 results are PR 7,8,6,7,8. The first is, unsurprisingly, business.com.

Neil.

I have a site that was PR0 and now PR2 but traffic and sales remain the same via Google. What then is the whole fuss about high PR all about? About selling links, I also do not subscribe wholeheartedly to it. I prefer building links in natural formats.
Thanks.

I think it’s more like the “Total PageRank Pool” is equal to the total number of webpages indexed. So, when the web was 100 pages, the sites shared a pool of 100… but now the pool may be 10 billion. Some sites with high PageRank will gain links as the site grows and maintain their high ranking… other will lose out to new sites who are growing faster… but it’s growth relative to the overall growth of the pool that’s important.

For more on PageRank, see…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Neil.

So if the total PageRank of all web pages is indeed a finite number, that makes competition for PageRank much more fierce.

Hypothetically, if the grand total of all PR across the internet was 100, and there were only 20 or 30 pages in existence, there would be plenty of PR to go around. But if there were suddenly 10,000 web pages there would be very few with high PR and the rest would be left to clean up the scraps.

Tthat’s just an example using tiny numbers compared to the billions of web pages that exist, but with new sites going up constantly there must be a breaking point at some point or another.

Of course, I put little stock in PR anyway. It’s better to concentrate on creating quality content that brings in revenue than worry about a little green bar in your browser. Though you make a good point about a high PR making a good first impression on visitors. Something to think about.

I think Google index every single page they can, then use the total number of pages as the PageRank “pool”, then apply their algorithm to decide what PageRank score individual pages should have. In that manner they align their system with an increasingly large web index.

I seem to remember Leslie Rhode saying that each page you create generates a tiny amount of new PageRank… which basically means the same.

So, if the web is growing, but your site isn’t, your “share” of it will fall proportionately.

Neil.

Warmest Regards
Mark

I agree completely. It’s like the marketer who puts a sports car on their sales letter to indicate “success”. But, the “show” is important too… people’s first impressions of you are important… whether that means a flashy car or a PR9 homepage… it’s still affects how people perceive you and how “successful” you are.

Hmmm… I wonder if a flashy car can be a business expense? Actually, it’s my business and it won’t be buying any fast-depreciating flashy cars any time soon!

Neil.

I’ve thought about buying sites as PR boosters for other sites… I guess that’s taking buying text links one step further… buying the whole site.

Neil.