Before I get started on this, let me answer some of the comments I will undoubtedly have if I don’t state this: Yes I know Google Page Rank isn’t as important as it once seemed. It puzzles me why, whenever I talk about Google Page Rank I get at least one person telling me how unimportant it is, well if its so unimportant why do you care so much? I do believe Google is playing down the value of Page Rank recently especially because people have attempted (with varying success) to change their page rank by buying links from others. However, as they are the World’s leading authority on search engine placement, forgive me if I show a little interest in how they measure the value of a page and its content. And yes, I do realise that Google PR does not seem to directly affect search engine results and traffic.Right, that’s out of the way, now I can get down to business.

Why do I think this?

Ok, the site I am talking about is our online portfolio for artists website, Voodoochilli.net. For years the site has had a Google Page Rank of 5, but a few months ago this went down to 4. I understand that Google has done some updates recently and that the measurement of Page Rank is probably logarithmic meaning that a Page Rank of 5 is much higher than a Page rank of 4. I also realise that these Page Ranks aren’t fixed numbers, the more websites that have Page Rank the harder it is to compete. I should also point at that we have not lost any considerable amount of traffic since the Page Rank was reduced.

I have a few reasons to believe that our site might have been penalised. Firstly it does surprise me that the Page Rank has reduced when in fact the site has many more back links than previously. According to Google’s Webmaster Tools the home page has thousands of relevant back links and many of them are from PR5 and PR 4 websites. Being a community website, it’s nature is to grow, and the amount of incoming links also grows with it. Indeed the site appears to be growing at around 150% every year.

My second reason for suspecting that Google may have penalised the site is that all of the links I have in the Google Directory no longer show any page rank, whereas other peoples sites do. This is consistent with what I have heard happening to other people that have been penalised 1 Page Rank point.

My third point is an interesting one. I have lost the link now, but in my web statistics logs there was record of a lot of incoming links from Googles server – I am not sure if it was someone else’s Web Master Tools account or the discussion groups on Google, but for some reason, there was a lot of traffic coming from Google regarding our website (and we are not talking about your usual search engine traffic). I suspect someone reported our site for having paid links – something it used to have.

Why would Google have Penalised me?

As mentioned above, the site used to have paid links. I was never aware that this was a problem and certainly didn’t think Google would penalise because of it. The fact that there is a link in Googles Webmaster tools to report other sites that are selling paid links means that Google doesn’t like this one bit.

Google States:

“We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users’ best interests at heart. Some site owners attempt to “buy PageRankâ„¢” in the form of paid links to their sites. Buying links to improve PageRank violates our quality guidelines.

Google uses a number of methods to detect paid links, including algorithmic techniques. We also welcome information from our users. If you know of a site that buys or sells links, please tell us by filling out the fields below. We’ll investigate your submissions, and we’ll use your data to improve our algorithmic detection of paid links.”

I can see the reasoning behind this – Why should people be able to buy their way up to the top? I guess the flip-side argument would be – Why shouldn’t someone that’s worked hard building up their site be allowed to sell links on their site? Some people in the SEO world have speculated that this whole issue is to play down the value of other text link exchanges schemes leaving Google with a clear monopoly.

Where to go from Here?

I have removed all references to advertising on that website, with the exception of Google’s own Adsense programme. I have contacted Google via the “Request reconsideration” link in Webmasters’s tools and I am eagerly awaiting their reply. Who knows, maybe they will tell me it hasn’t been penalised and I am getting worried about nothing. I have also been on the discussion boards, but no one has given me an answer yet.

I would be very interested to hear other peoples experiences on this.

What is it? Well apparently search engine companies are focusing more on trust these days than on other quantifying methods such as page rank (PR). Will we one day have a little green Trust Rank bar on our browsers telling us how much people trust a certain website? I hope not, as just with Google Page Rank there are clever seo people who know how to manipulate such figures. Also how do we vote a confidence or trust on a website? Surely people are going to down vote their competitors

I don’t know too much about all this TR stuff, I don’t know if anyone does. But if you do, I would like to hear your views on this issue.

This is a tricky one and something I have been thinking about for quite some time. Having a high Alexa or Google rank can be a way of trying to quantify a web sites value, which is especially important if you are going to sell it or intend to sell advertising. The problem I have with it is that Alexa and Google rankings can be cheated.

I will give you an example how people do this. Supposing you and ten of your mates all have websites that you visit every day. You could do a deal that you promise to visit each others sites daily with the Alexa toolbar installed. The tool bar will report back to Alexa that there have been more visitors lately and your rank will go up. Because only a small percentage of people actually have to toolbar installed, Alexa have to base the figures that they present based on projections. For example, if only 1% of people use the Alexa toolbar, their final projections must be multiplied by 100. Its quite easy to see how just a few people can make a massive difference to a small websites results. There are even websites popping up now that automate this system for you. You install a bit of software which makes your site visit everyone else’s. In return, you and everyone gets a higher rank, and the software owners siphon off some of the visitors which they then sell for advertising.

Another thing to consider is that site demographics will also affect results. Visitors to websites about Alexa and Google rankings are more likely to be interested in such things and are therefore much more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed on their system.

The same is true with Google, but I think things are a little more complex. The Google Page Rank system is based on inbound links which count as a vote in favour of a particular website. If you are lucky enough to already own a few high ranking websites it’s pretty easy to artificially boost a ranking on new site. You could in fact set up a website that has no value at all, and link a dozen or so very highly ranked sites to it which would result in another highly ranked site.

I believe most of these problems get ironed out when a site is truly massive. The top 100 websites in the Alexa rankings are all deservedly placed.

I think the truth of the matter is that it’s almost impossible to quantify a website’s “worth” using mathematics alone. Algorithms employed by the best search engines are extremely advanced but they are no where near perfect.