I'm reading conflicting information about this one.

Should I consider PageRank in assessing how strong a link would be?

In my opinion, yes. Page rank does still matter, at least for potential advertisers. Page rank signifies a certain stream of visitors and that's a big part of it.

I've not heard anything to lead me to believe that page rank is not still important, although some smaller details seem to change, like the use of meta tags, I'd say.

I'd be interested to hear what the pros have to say about the page rank.

PageRank does still matter.

PageRank reflects how likely a visitor is to land on the page. The more likely, the higher the PageRank. The reason that Google has downgraded PageRank is because the likelihood that you land on a page does not reflect the quality of the content on the page. Saying that, getting a link from a site with 3 PageRank vs 5 PageRank makes a huge difference.

This is how it works:



C has a high pagerank despite the fact that it has not many links to it, because it is linked to from B, a site people are 38.4% likely to land on. The link on Page B to page C makes it very likely that visitors to Page B will eventually find Page C. Compare that to the likelihood that one would find page D (3.9%). That is small compared to the strength of page B, as a result, a link from page D cannot pass on as much value to A as B does to C.

Moral of the story: getting a link from a site with high PageRank matters, but it is not the only factor that weighs. If you get a link from a page with high PageRank, but your content is really bad, you won't rank well in the search engines.

that is very interesting lorenz...I think it is a cycle if you have a higher page rank your site will getclicked more and when it is clicked..its page rank increases...but also if the content is good, the page rank will increase many folds.

Thats a brilliant explanation Lorenz. Thanks

I've tried to explainthat to people a dozen times and hardly made sense to myself never mind those i was explaining to.. now i'll just steal yours (with full credit of course ;0)