I was browsing Domaining.com and noticed that Mike Berkens asked some reasonable PR-related questions. Since a lot of people are not quite sure whether or not PR is a metric worth taking into consideration these days, I decided to write this blog post.

Is PR Important?

If you’re a link seller, yes.

Otherwise, no.

Was PR Important in the Past?

Yes but as Google’s algos started becoming more sophisticated, PR started to lose its importance.

A quote from the official Google blog (the blog post in question was written back in 2008):

“The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system.”

As you can see, it was clear even in 2008 that the importance of PR is on a downward spiral. Important words from this statement:

“most famous” – they said “most famous” instead of “most important” in order to make it clear that even in 2008, there were other more important metrics out there which received less “coverage” than PR

“much larger system” – three words through which they explained that PR was less important in 2008 than back when the Web was still in its earlier stages. Add a bit of common sense to the mix and I’m sure you’ll understand how things stand in 2011 and beyond.

Why Is PR Important to Link Sellers?

Simply because lots of people make decisions based on PR when buying links. In my opinion, buying links purely for PR-related purposes is a mistake in 2011 but this doesn’t change the fact that most people do it and as a result, PR is an important part of your business model (… even if for the wrong reasons) if you’re selling links.

Case Studies?

Well, DomainingTips.com is one example. It’s a PR0 because the previous owner used to sell links a while back and it received a PR penalty, yet it has been ranking on page one for the term “domaining” for a very long time.

Feel free to perform searches for various niches and you’ll see countless examples of lower PR sites which outrank high PR ones.

But Lots of High PR Sites Have Great Rankings, Why?

“Correlation does not imply causation” or in other words:

– yes, the site in question has great rankings
– yes, the site in question has a high PR
– even though it has great rankings and a high PR, it does NOT have great rankings BECAUSE of its high PR

All in All

If you want to develop sites and chase after organic traffic, PR should not be on top of your priority list. If you’re selling links, PR will unfortunately be an important part of your business model but a few years from now, its importance to link sellers will decrease dramatically IMO.