Floating at page rank zero

The ways of Google are mysterious and weird, especially when you start looking at the various ways of determining the value of a blog. While there are a lot of metrics that someone can use, from AWStats, to blog influence, to Technorati and the ability to be placed in various social networking sites. Page rank and how that influences Google’s search return is one of the more frustrating things that people have to deal with.

So when taking a look at a page rank 4 site, and then taking a look at a site that is floating on page rank zero, when they show up near identical with the same number of links. As well as the same number of pages in the search engine, the same kinds of quality links as well (page ranks above zero), one has to really wonder, what is going on, or what is the web site doing wrong.

In many cases it can be something as simple as text link ads, in other cases it can be something as complex as keywords, site design, and how the search engine spider sees the web site. The only real way to know for sure is to bring in the SEO expert, unfortunately that is usually the expensive option, and one that many blogs or web sites can not afford to do. They end up doing DIY SEO, which is more of a hit or miss proposition depending on the techniques that they try.

In many ways sometimes making Google happy is something you want to do, some sites though after a while just tend to give up and go on their merry way. What is more interesting is when the site has a page rank zero, but can score high or return high results when looking for various search strings. This makes Google’s page rank even more bizarre in the longer run.

While SEO is one thing, it might not matter in the longer run if you can rank high in a search return. While the social networks are nice, and popping high on the social networks can deliver spiky traffic bursts, Google provides the long tail that so many blogs and other sites rely on. Data and content are ephemeral; it is the long tail that is the value for a blog or a web site.

Floating at page rank zero means that the long tail will not be as long, this increases the reliance on spiky traffic, and flooding of the sites that can provide that kind of traffic. Digg, Propeller, Yasvs, Stumbled Upon all get used, and then eventually the user or site is banned because of overuse or use against the TOS of those web sites. Usually someone would advise patience when this happens, but then there are some sites that seem to get a quarter of a million hits right off the starting line, while others languish at page rank zero forever.

Google has a lot of great web master tools, advice, and ways of increasing page rank legitimately, which are best to follow rather than relying on black hat SEO, or dubious ways of making a web site more popular. While it is best to follow the Google rules, page rank zero at times can be very frustrating.