Google Update and PageRank

Google finally updated in the past few days and the PageRank of all the sites out there has been recalculated. I wish I could tell you that it made huge difference but in reality it didn’t do much of anything. All of my new sites that were PR0 hopped up to either PR4 or 5, but I did not see any difference in traffic whatsoever. It is widely accepted that pagerank has very little to do with where your page shows up in a list of google search results. I have not noticed any difference or large variation in my search result positions.

The only real use I see for PageRank these days is a currency which you can use as leverage when trading links with someone. I have seen many link exchanges out there that require your site to have a certain PR before they’ll link to you, or for your links page to be at a certain PR.

I have not yet decided what I am going to do with all my new-found PR. I may sell some of it in the form of directory listings, maybe sell some permanent links (unlikely, but possible). I will probably use this to sell some listings on a couple of my directories, but for the most part leave my normal sites unmolsted other than using this new PR as leverage for link exchanges.

If you are one of those people whose sole purpose is to increase your pagerank, STOP! It doesn’t do nearly as much as people seem to think. Spend your time building a nice quantity of quality content on your site and users will find it via search even if your site is PR1.