There’s More to Google Beefs Than Google PR

Anyone who’s not in search might think there’s only one argument that small businesses and tech bloggers have with Google.

There are several. Some are silly, some have merit, some are somewhere in the middle.

Today I was reading what Scoble was saying about the little green indicator so many people are obsessed with.

He said:

Now, normally I’d be front and center on all these ego games but here the real truth is that Page Rank has been dead for years. That’s why I never even looked at it anymore.

I agree that too much emphasis has been placed on Google Page Rank.

I’ll also agree that those who attempt to game Google should be expecting a wrist slap.

My problem with Google is that more and more, the corrective measures seem to be ineffective against spam, while simultanously, good content is getting harder to find in Google.

That’s making my Google experience worse, not better. Of all the Google products, I use Google search the least.

Yes, of all the search engines, I still use Google search the most, but by a slimmer and slimmer margin. I’m thinking Google is aware of this and is responding with these changes — but suddenly they are only making the problem worse.

That is part of why I also think that the fuss over Google PR, while overblown, has some merit.

To understand why, first, let’s get rid of the myth that the little green indicator that approximates your Google PR has any hard relationship to where you rank in the search engines.

The indicator doesn’t show you what your true PR is in the first place.

In the second, there are hundreds of factors that go into your ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). I’ve ranked number one for free traffic tips since 2002 in some search engines, all three since 2003. I’ve had a PR of 5 since then and have never gone down, though it’s briefly gone up.

Yet I have hundreds more keyword rankings than many of my PR 6 and 7 peers – not vanity rankings that don’t send traffic, either.

Conclusions after noticing similiar things in hundreds of my clients sites: your ranking in Google and your Google PR have an indirect relationship at best.

If that’s true, why the fuss about Google PR?

Because most people don’t know it’s true. It’s partly Google’s fault, partly a consumer education issue, and partly because the rise in PR often coincides with a rise in ranking.

But just because the sun comes up during my breakfast each day doesn’t mean I, or my corn flakes, made the sun come up.

We as site owners also need to be more responsible about testing and tracking to differentiate between causation and coinciding events. Or at least be more careful about what information we trust when browsing message boards and blogs. Not everyone who says they’re an expert is one – you have to measure by the results they get and how long they last.

But on with the story.

Webmasters got the impression from Google that Google PR is a measurement of how important your site is, relative to other sites.

Sites with higher PR seem to get spidered first as well, which theoretically means their content ends up in the search index faster and more naturally than through a site map – and this benefit extends to people who are linked from suuch sites.

For businesses that thrive on timeliness or being first to market, this has some importance.

This importance quickly got overblown when people began to associate it too strongly with where a page ranks in the Google SERPs. That implied value – which again, Google themselves implied – gave sites that could figure out how to get higher PRs consistently a source of income, namely from sites that could not.

It seemed fair that people who were clueless could leverage the skills of those who were not, as long as both were adding topical content.

Now, on the one hand, you have the insinuation by Google that Google PR doesn’t necessarily help your rankings, but an opposing suggestion by Google that says it has some vague importance.

On the other hand, research shows an apparent in-direct relationship, as well as a way to get into Google quickly. Google also still seems to favor sites it finds over sites submitted directly to Google, whether through the regular submissions link or through the Google sitemaps program.

Webmasters continued to pay for the privilege of these links widely until Google expressly forbade it. But that’s not where the anger comes from. Changing policy is fair business practice.

The anger comes in from people frustrated with trying to get into Google by playing by the rules that are displayed in public, and then to be penalized for a rule change that isn’t implicitly stated.

I disagree here with Scoble, who says, particularly with tech bloggers that the source of their frustration is a sense of “entitlement”.

Maybe for some, but for many of the small business owners who depend on Google to get their businesses found, it’s more due to dependency and desperation. And yes, as an overall traffic specialist, I think it’s a mistake to place your faith in Google for all your traffic.

But think how we would feel if suddenly Visa said that everything we were doing right to get payments accepted was now wrong and we had to follow new rules to correct the market for the people who were gaming Visa. What if they did that every year, sometimes three times a year?

The argument about the actual Google PR is one thing. And largely, that one thing is Dumb.

In and of itself, that little green indicator on your Google toolbar doesn’t put money in your pocket, so who cares what it says.

Yes, some people have been able to price links from their site higher, and to artibrarily lower the PR seems unfair. After all, most people who have sold links on their site do it to send traffic, or as advertising, not to game Google. They even comply with the no-follow attribute.

From what I’ve seen, being much closer to the fray, webmasters and search specialists are angry because they play by the “rules” and still get smacked down, often with no explanation or recourse.

Personally, I attach only marginal value to Google Page Rank, and will never consider it the be all and end all.

I’m proud to have been able to maintain a PR of 5 because it means to me that I’m consistently doing something right. But I don’t obsess over it – when Google’s changes are over, it might be a 3, or maybe I went up to a 6.

I don’t know and I really don’t care much if it changes.

What I care about is that I can get traffic from Google, traffic that means something, traffic that is in line with the content I create, and not some incidental number one ranking that has nothing to do with my site and won’t add value to the visitor;s experience when they end up here.

Knowing how to do that, and to be able to help other people do it is more than enough for me.

Google is only one traffic source and it’s not the most important one.

It is among them, sure, but as a traffic specialist, it seems as much as a mistake to tie the entire worth of your company to being in favor with Google alone as it does to attach the success of your company to how many clients you get from advertising alone.

Still, many of the arguments webmasters have with Google are valid. We add value to Google, and optimizing our site to be most useful to Google isn’t wrong, as long as we don’t cross the line of trying to make our sites relevant to topics they aren’t.

Google constantly changing the rules of engagement, year after year, to get better results has been fine with most of us.

There wouldn’t be a need for SEO without it – why would search specialist kill their own industry by demanding Google publicize its algorithm? It would destroy Google too – if everyeone knew how to crack the code, anyone could cheat the search engine. And the Internet is defined by change – the one constant online is that everything will be different. The main variable is when.

However, penalizing some people who haven’t crossed those lines is what many of the tech bloggers and webmasters are most angry at, not Google Page Rank.

It wasn’t such a big deal when it didn’t seem to be affecting the quality of the index. I’d think the concerns of the people who potentially populate Google’s search results would be among the priority users. Second to searchers, but since we also spend money on pay per click, at least as consumers, our voices should be heard.

Because in the end, only one thing has to happen for Google’s empire to topple, one thing I really don’t want, because a good part of my income on other sites comes from Google advertisers.

That one thing is for people to stop using Google in favor of something else. It’s not that far fetched. Isn’t that what made Yahoo number two?

Maybe the blogosphere doen’t have the power, much less the need to do this. But a better search engine would. It coulld come at any time.

Listen to us Google. Some of our points are valid. Most of us aren’t trying to buck the sysem, we want to improve it.