Google Pagerank Update | Does Pagerank Accurately Judge Website Popularity?

26 Jul 2008

Google Pagerank Update – Does Pagerank Accurately Judge Website Popularity?

Author: Jim | Filed under: Announcements, Blog Services, Observations

As many of you have probably heard by this point in time, the Q2 2008 Google Pagerank update has just concluded. Every few months, Google re-evaluates every website on the internet and places rankings on some of the best sites available. This ranking metric is very important for blogs for many reasons, including reader participation, advertising rates and industry reputation.

Don’t believe what you hear, Google Pagerank isn’t as worthless as people (with bad rankings) try to point out. The bottom line is that sometimes, the rankings are unjustifiably high or low. However, for the most part Google does a fantastic job presenting accurate representations of website popularity. Jimvesting.com held it’s PageRank 4 designation, which I believe is a 100% accurate rating for the time being based on statistics, quality and traffic. Despite the fact that I would prefer a PR 5 (wouldn’t we all), it’s important to look objectively at things to see what you are really worth in the eyes of a third party.

Jimvesting’s Pagerank “Fair Value” Rankings
Because of the constant ranting on how “unfair” Google’s Pagerank service is, I decided to pull generously from my RSS reader to see how other blogs in the “make money online” niche fared on the updating process. Below, you will find a list of 55 blogs, their new Pagerank as of July 26th 2008, and their Jimvesting “Fair Value” ranking.

Q2 2008 Jimvesting’s “Fair Value” Pagerank Analysis

Website Name	PageRank	Jimvesting “Fair Value”	Valuation
Pro Blogger	6	6	Appropriate
Shoe Money	6	6	Appropriate
45n5	5	5	Appropriate
Bloggin Ads	5	4	Overvalued
Court’s IM School	5	5	Appropriate
Jim Kukral	5	5	Appropriate
Zac Johnson	5	5	Appropriate
Affiliate Confession	4	4	Appropriate
Blogger Unleashed	4	5	Undervalued
Bootstrapping Blog	4	3	Overvalued
Carl Ocab	4	4	Appropriate
Chris Guthrie	4	3	Overvalued
Click Consultants	4	4	Appropriate
Ian Fernando	4	4	Appropriate
Mixed Market Arts	4	4	Appropriate
Neils Web	4	3	Overvalued
Nicky Cakes	4	4	Appropriate
The Blog Entrepreneur	4	4	Appropriate
Jimvesting	4	4	Appropriate
The University Kid	4	4	Appropriate
Uber Affiliate	4	5	Undervalued
Affiliate Burn	3	3	Appropriate
Big Ben Patton	3	2	Overvalued
Bud Calabrese	3	2	Overvalued
Caroline Middlebrook	3	4	Undervalued
Jason Boom	3	3	Appropriate
John Chow	3	6	Undervalued
John Cow	3	4	Undervalued
John Hasson	3	3	Appropriate
Jonathan Volk	3	4	Undervalued
Simply Dunn	3	3	Appropriate
Stephan Miller	3	3	Appropriate
The WWW Blog	3	3	Appropriate
Tyler Cruz	3	4	Undervalued
Blog About Your Blog	2	3	Undervalued
Blogger Venue	2	2	Appropriate
Da Blogger	2	1	Overvalued
Everybody Go To	2	3	Undervalued
Home-Biz Resource	2	3	Undervalued
Melvin Blog	2	2	Appropriate
Miss Write	2	2	Appropriate
Monkey Blogger	2	2	Appropriate
Mr. Javo	2	3	Undervalued
Road 2 Blogging	2	2	Appropriate
Stand Out Blogger	2	2	Appropriate
The Germz	2	3	Undervalued
The Internet Entrepreneur Diary	2	3	Undervalued
I’m With Joe	1	2	Undervalued
Nat Booty	1	2	Undervalued
Can’t Get Rich	0	2	Undervalued
Enkay Blog	0	3	Undervalued
Internet Babel	0	0	Appropriate
Money Bites	0	3	Undervalued
One Man’s Goal	0	2	Undervalued
Viking Blogger	0	1	Undervalued

The Results
Google often gets bad press on the Pagerank process, but I believe that a lot of this criticism is undeserved. As the results show, a lot of the blogs that represent the “make money online” niche are either appropriately valued or downright overvalued… getting more than they statistically deserve in my opinion.

Appropriately Valued: 51% of blogs
Overvalued: 12.7% of blogs
Undervalued: 36.3% of blogs

I was overly critical of Pageranks in my own analysis, so most will actually find more than 51% of blogs to be accurately represented by the recent Pagerank update. At any rate, a clear majority (63.7%) should have no cause for concern, but it is the rough one-third of blogs that is publishing the negative press that we have all come to know and love.

The Verdict
Google does in fact to an impressive job in accurately portraying a website’s overall popularity and traffic strength. Many webmasters feel that they deserve better rankings, but lack the link juice from upper-tier blogs to get them the reputation that they need to obtain higher rankings. Furthermore, many “undervalued” blogs simply haven’t been around enough for Google to honestly justify a high PR for the website.

Bottom Line: Hopefully, this sample pool of websites is large enough to get an accurate representation of the Google Pagerank process… as I feel it does. All this weekend, be prepared to hear all of the Pagerank “horror stories” that are out there. Just don’t forget that many bloggers post on impulse rather than rationality, and this case study clearly favors Google as the results lean toward appropriate or generous valuations. Sure, there are a few websites that Google has totally botched… but you need to expect that to happen if they are analyzing so many pages!