well, that' why I came in this forum, to see if it's a PR update today, cause I noticed my website http://www.basic-directory.com has received a PR 2 , from 0. And I cannot believed my eyes
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The Google Toolbar PR is completely irrelevant as the information that it shows is selective and completely out of date anyway.

Page Rank itself is an irrelevancy as over the years my site has gone from 5 to 4 and now to 3 but it hasn't affected my ranking on Google in the slightest and I still remain in the top half dozen.
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Ian

Hi Ian

I disagree.

Quite simply:

1. If a client views my website before signing up for my services, they first check out my Page Rank and Alexa ranking to gauge how well they think my site performs. Agencies that use me do the same. So obviously I prefer having a decent Page Rank for them to look at.

2. With tens of thousands of website visitors coming through my site each month, I imagine many of them do as I do when visiting a site and briefly look at the Page Rank of the homepage. This establishes a little "Trust" between my site and the visitor.

3, When looking to build links for my site with other sites in my industry, many will only trade links with equal or higher Page Rank. Being PR1 or PR2 would mean a part of my SEM would suffer.

If your site has dropped that much Page Rank it means your incoming links have dropped or you have been penalised. I am going to assume the former.

Good to hear your rankings have stayed the same regardless of PR though.

Tool bar Page Rank may not be an accurate indication of your current algorithmic PR but it does give trust status and indications on how well your link marketing is performing.
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Matthew Anderson
UK business franchises for sale and franchise information resource

It's interesting that the reasons that you have quoted in 1) 2) and 3) are all to do with perception rather than actual facts.

Inward links is another thing that Google isn't particularly accurate with nor forthcoming about "what counts"

Three years ago I had 182 links to my site according to Google whilst today it's dropped to 14 without affecting my position on the page.

These aren't the total links as Yahoo reported 6,480 at the same time three years ago.

Alexa is deemed by many to be a waste of time as it's far too easy to manipulate the data with many programmes around to do that for you.

In my own case I take the attitude that it's my constant high position in Google that gives my site authority and not the PR or lack of it
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Ian

My page rank over the last year has been up and down and now up again, not entirely sure it is of huge importance but it is always nice to see it go up.
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Hi Ian

Google only shows a sample of your inbound links when using the link:www.site.com command, if you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools it will show you a more accurate reflection that can be seen only by the authorised account holder. This, amongst other reasons, is to make it more difficult for webmasters/SEO experts to manipulate the SERPS by monitoring competitors links and following their strategies.

Alexa: Yes, can be manipulated but unless a concerted effort is made by dozens of people, in essence "cheating the system" then it is still a good gauge on your rankings. It also contains useful information such as rankings in specific countries and average pageviews per visitors. For me I can see that it has worth because as my traffic has risen in the past few years so to has my Alexa ranking. Although not perfect, it does give me a nice tool that "at a glance" I can see how well my site is performing and the sites of my competitors. I do not think either of us are in industries where people are likely to manipulate the results.

Wish I had time to answer in more details but have to go out, would love to carry this on with you a little next week

Best wishes.
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Matthew Anderson
UK business franchises for sale and franchise information resource