Oct 29 2007
Jumping on the PR Post Bandwagon
So it looks like Google has finally graced our websites with a PR update with some people getting a mighty bitchslap and others coming away unscathed. I was one of the lucky ones who made out alright with this update, though I’m beginning to wonder more and more whether worrying about PR is just a huge waste of time. But even still, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and post some thoughts about the recent update and how my sites did.
My budget travel site held tight at PR4 which is surprising since it’s a member of Text Link Ads and also an all out links whore. I’ve got so many paid links on that baby I don’t even remember which are legit anymore. I really should sort that site out but in the meantime I’ve got a bunch of links that are set to expire in December so hanging in at PR4 will make that a lot easier if I choose to go for renewals. When I sold them the site was PR5 so I’m curious to see if I’ll be able to get the same price.
My working holidays site also stuck at PR4 which I’m happy with. I’m going to attempt to sell links on this site but I’ll be going about it in a different way. Rather than heading to Digitalpoint in search of advertisers that are vaguely related to travel, I’m going to be contacting companies that would be a perfect fit as advertisers. Sort of like cold calling, I guess. I think selling links with this approach will rely less on PR and more on traffic stats and a well defined target market so I’m not too concerned with what the PR is on this site.
My living in London site jumped from PR2 to PR3 which was a bit of a disappointment considering this is my most popular site but I’ll be selling links directly to companies with this one too so I’ll be focusing mainly on improving my traffic.
It’s hard to say how my other sites did because I forget what their PR was before the update. I think everything has either stayed the same or jumped up by a point. Do I care? Not really.
I think the main thing that this whole manual downgrading of people’s PR has brought to light is how ruthless Google can be. They’ve identified private link sales as competition and are trying to stamp it out but I think they’re fighting an impossible battle, even for them.
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I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go.
I agree that people sweat too much about PR updates but having said that it is nice when you get a rise, it’s like someone else is has an appreciation for your site, in a weird sort of way!
Hi Kirsty. Love the site and how could I not stick around to see you set off!
I stayed pretty steady. Went from PR6 to PR5 on www.intesolinternational.com, stayed at PR5 for www.huntesl.com, and stayed at PR5 for my new site www.lotuscourses.com (got PR5 REALLY quickly with this one without much linking… interesting). I was most chuffed when the blog on Lotus went from zero to PR3.
I’ve only really given this some thought recently, but I doubt that page rank matters much for organic search results and even though my rankings for my best performing site have gone down in the recent shuffle, I’m still getting good SERPs.
Perhaps they should change ‘page rank’ to ‘ego rank’ -)
Nice blog Kirsty!
I’ve not seen much change in the latest updates - http://www.gym-membership.co.uk has stayed much the same - steady PR3 pages pretty much throughout, and my cricket shirts site has also remained pretty constant, yet both sites are ranking better on google than they were a month ago!
I think it’s a nice rough indication of the link popularity of the site, but once you’ve reached a certain level (PR3 or 4), it’s more important to have well structured SEO’d pages for definite keyword sets.