What's the fuss over Google PR?
Some weeks ago, all my social networks were abuzz with excitement over a Google PR update.
Before I go on, what is Google PR? PR stands for PageRank. PR supposedly determines how important or relevant a page is by counting the number of pages that link to it. But it’s not as simple as that. The more “important” or higher PR pages link to a particular site, the more PR “points” the site gains thus raising its PR value considerably. Google PR ranges from 0 to 10, with PR0 theoretically defined as a new site with no one linking to it. Google updates PRs periodically and when they do, bloggers in particular get really excited about it.
For the record, I’m not one of those bloggers because for the life of me I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. Does having a high PR mean you have a lot of readers and high traffic? No. I’ve seen PRO sites with better traffic compared to those with PRs 2 and 3. Does having a high PR mean you’re always on top of Google searches? No. I’ve seen PRO sites come up to the top 10 Google search results on a regular basis and higher PR sites not coming up at all. Does having a high PR mean you’re making tons of money from your site? I don’t know. I tried registering for an international paid post network before and PR was one of the things they considered when determining your rate per post – the higher, the better. For the record, keyword is *tried.* I was unsuccessful because my blog is on blogspot and they wanted blogs that aren’t on free servers, which had their own domains. Besides, I’m very picky about what I write and so it probably wouldn’t have worked out for me. I think it’s a paradox basing a blog’s paid post rate on PR because Google hates paid posts. There is a tendency for a blog’s PR to go down when it does paid posts on a regular basis.
So what’s the fuss? There’s this seeming obsession over PR from bloggers around me and I don’t get it. My blog has had PR4 practically forever and apart from bragging rights for Lord knows what, I don’t really feel that it’s helping me with anything except make my sidebar look just a tad cooler. I don’t even know how I got to PR4 because I remember starting at PR2 the moment I became aware of this whole PR phenomenon. I just kept on blogging about stuff that interested me.
If anyone can enlighten me on why Google PR is so important, by all means please do so because although I’ve been blogging for more than two years now I still don’t get it.
