webber286 asked 4 years agoThe question is…why is PR the only metric used by so many webmasters to value a page on the web? There are so many other valuable metrics; traffic, backlink count and actual rankings to name a few. The obvious answer is that we are lazy and PR is the quick and easy way to determine some semblance of value, no matter how flawed (or antiquated) PR really is.
So, last week Open Site Explorer was launched by SEOMoz, and along with this new SEO tool are some interesting metrics called Page Authority and Domain Authority. While these aren’t perfect metrics, they seem to provide more depth to them than simple PR, especially since OSE also shows you the links and domains linking into a website.
Here’s how they explain it:
Domain and Page Authority scores are both calculated using SEOmoz’s Ranking Models work. In essence, we take a lot of rankings data from the search engines (by running queries) and then try to build a predictive scoring system using our own on-page analyses and Linkscape link data to construct an algorithm that will effectively reproduce the search engines’ results. Our current accuracy hovers in the 70% range, but over time, we expect to improve.
Now that this metric is out there, will you be looking at Page Authority when exchanging/buying/selling a link?
webber286 answered 4 years ago
I do think they have a good system, but their inventory of sites is much smaller and updated less often. I have a few good links that don’t show up on there at all.
From some research it also seems that it doesn’t have too much impact on rankings. I have seen similar sites, one that had high page & domain authority on OSE and the other which outranked it for every term. Unless the first guy had horrible on page it would seem OSE wasn’t a really good measure of what it took to rank, which quite frankly is all I am concerned with.
That’s a difficult measurement since OSE is only attempting to score the strength of a page, which if all things are considered equal, then the higher score would outrank the lower score. However, not all things are equal, since the content on every page is unique, domains are unique and link profiles are also unique.
For example, 2 websites might have the same score, while one ranks top 10 for “online gambling” and the other doesn’t rank top 100 because they don’t target that keyword, or haven’t gotten many backlinks with that keyword. It would be nice if OSE gave an estimate on which keywords a site should be ranking best for. It seems like the data might be there to make that estimate since they know the anchor text distribution and have a score for each of those pages linking in.
webber286 answered 4 years ago
86/100 pr5
85/100 pr4
47/100 pr5
thats how some of mine ranked up.Obviously for link sales the 47/100 pr5 will get more than the pr4 85/100.Google has brainwashed us for years ,they send us 80%+ traffic so hard to change our ways now
Based on your knowledge of your own sites, would you say those scores are accurate for the strength you feel each of your sites has? (eg: traffic and rankings)
casinodave answered 4 years ago
Cache date should be very important in judging authority. Anything over 6 weeks old not very much authority even if it has pagerank.
webber286 answered 4 years ago
OSE Page authority is still a guess…
Yes, everything SEO related online is a guess since Google doesn’t share their algorithm details, and for good reasons. The point is to find the best guess available as clearly PR is not all that helpful anymore.
casinodave answered 4 years ago
Yes, everything SEO related online is a guess since Google doesn’t share their algorithm details, and for good reasons. The point is to find the best guess available as clearly PR is not all that helpful anymore.
Webber I agree with you here…I just don’t think replacing a “black-box secret metic” (toolbar PR) with another “black-box secret metric” (OSE Page Authority) is the answer though, which is what I thought you were suggsting by the title of the post.
TBPR has been a terrible metric for how long? At least 2+ years ago (if not longer) G started f’ing with the toolbar and even then it was not a true sign of authority. So people still infatuated with PR now are ether newbs, paid to find PR links, or probably wont ever get that pagerank shouldn’t be the metric. Convincing these types of people otherwise…good luck.
A bunch of webmasters chasing PR is not a bad thing…let them, keep them busy. Used to have a poker saying “don’t tap on the glass”. When the poker pro gets sucked out on the river he should not tell the fish how horrible the call was or why it was the wrong move. I would hate to see the day that everyone forgets about PR and concentrates on getting more traffic and higher rankings.
How does the tool do for you when you look at your own sites? Does it find all your authority pages?
webber286 answered 4 years ago
Webber I agree with you here…I just don’t think replacing a “black-box secret metic” (toolbar PR) with another “black-box secret metric” (OSE Page Authority) is the answer though, which is what I thought you were suggsting by the title of the post.
TBPR has been a terrible metric for how long? At least 2+ years ago (if not longer) G started f’ing with the toolbar and even then it was not a true sign of authority. So people still infatuated with PR now are ether newbs, paid to find PR links, or probably wont ever get that pagerank shouldn’t be the metric. Convincing these types of people otherwise…good luck.
A bunch of webmasters chasing PR is not a bad thing…let them, keep them busy. Used to have a poker saying “don’t tap on the glass”. When the poker pro gets sucked out on the river he should not tell the fish how horrible the call was or why it was the wrong move. I would hate to see the day that everyone forgets about PR and concentrates on getting more traffic and higher rankings.
How does the tool do for you when you look at your own sites? Does it find all your authority pages?
I agree with your points, and realize that PR is going to be used as the currency of links for quite awhile longer, just trying to help out the broader CAP community by shedding light on the fact that chasing PR is not the smartest way to go about link building. PR is a complete black box and can clearly be manipulated, OSE may not be 100% open, but it is far from a black box, as you can see every backlink they are using to generate a PA score and you can look at those links and see what makes up their PA score. For the savvy SEOers out there, this is clearly much more useful than PR.
The tool seems pretty reliable when I look at my own pages. The one’s that are ranking receive the highest scores and the one’s that aren’t ranking receive the lower scores. I’ve also noticed in looking around at other sites that the scores do match up fairly well with the rankings that sites are receiving. IMO OSE is heads and shoulders above PR in determining the quality of a link.
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