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Have we all just gotten to a point where we are abandoning the idea of google PR? Isn't that what google wants of us? They knew they were in hot water when they went public and the foundation of their company - PR - was owned by Standford U. and they were just leasing it. (That was fine and dandy when they were a private company but not what shareholders want to hear). So should we just agree that google is turning away from PR and go with it? This is more of a rant than a post. Please ignore :)

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Short answer: the little green PageRank number that people used to trade on is no longer a reliable yardstick. PageRank began as a link-weighting idea in academic work and was exposed to the public via the Toolbar metric, but modern Google uses hundreds of signals and the public toolbar value has limited usefulness compared with real performance data (How Google Search works, PageRank background).

A few practical takeaways that connect to points from , , and : don’t treat a single visible PR number as a proxy for site quality; avoid buying or selling links that pass value without disclosure (Google explicitly calls out paid or manipulative link schemes) and expect that low-cost bulk link packages trade quantity for quality (Link schemes — Google Search Central). was right to push for audience metrics rather than raw counts; for publishers, pageviews and unique visitors (and the revenue those produce) are the right currency for ad inventory.

A short checklist for link/ad decisions:

  • Verify traffic and audience fit with analytics or a Search Console report instead of relying on a toolbar metric — use Google Search Console for verified referral and search data.
  • Prioritize editorial context, relevance, and real referral traffic over sheer link counts or sitewide placements.
  • Confirm link attributes (rel="nofollow"/"sponsored") and be transparent about paid placements to avoid policy issues.
  • Treat cheap, automated networks as high-risk: they rarely deliver engaged users and can trigger manual or algorithmic actions.

Final note: PageRank as an algorithmic idea still underlies link signals, but the public PR number is mostly a historical artifact. For both SEO and monetization, focus on measurable outcomes — organic traffic, conversions, user engagement — and on earning or transparently buying placements that serve real visitors.

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Member Avatar for cleanlava

PR is more for show these days. Who knows...I think the idea of PR still makes SEO companies a great deal of cheese!

Member Avatar for Dani

At least that I agree with :) I charge $250 for a footer link on every single one of the pages around here. I have gotten so many people saying that it is way too expensive for a PR5 and they wouldn't pay more than $20 for it. But what they don't understand is the reason we're only a PR5 is because we're only a year and a few months old, and didn't start getting heavily into SEO until after google stopped updating PR. So while we may be a PR5, we have over 170,000 of our pages spidered (that's 170,000 backlinks for your $250) and we have a few thousand backlinks ourselves!

I do apologize though - I didn't mean for this to be a sales pitch. I was just trying to demonstrate how PR doesn't hold much legit value though people still seem to use it to judge where they buy links from.

Member Avatar for Scribbller

PR is not really a true indicator of how popular your site is, I have seen a PR 6 site which has not been updated in over 6 months. When advertising space a more true indicator is the page views, unique hits and the hits you generate per month.

Member Avatar for mnemtsas

$250 a month? That is a lot. Sitewide links are vastly overrated. There are deals available now giving 95000 links on 5 different IP's with up to 100 anchor text variations. Total cost? $50 a month......

Member Avatar for Dani

Scribbller, go by page views and unique sessions. Hits mean absolutely nothing at all and are a useless statistic. ;) mnemtsas, I would LOVE to know where you could get 95,000 backlinks for $50 per month! I would buy!

Member Avatar for Dani

Ooh thanks for that! I hardly ever read the Digital Point forums which I always knew was a mistake :) I'm going to go read this thread now - you caught my interest. And yes, I agree, traffic has nothing to do with SEO or backlinks. But as far as measuring traffic is concerned, hits is a useless statistic (side topic).

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