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Money talks - and the world changes.These Google partnerships will change and evolve, and what is true one month might not be as accurate the next. Keep this in mind especially when you are opening your wallet to get listed somewhere. As I'm writing this, Yahoo is actually showing exactly the same search results as Google. So, what is the point of paying $299.00 US to get listed in Yahoo in the first place? I really don't know! With time and patience, and using your friends, you will get listed without paying anything. This "Yahoogle" partnership seems to be getting stronger and stronger, so it is quite possible that Google will end its association with ODP in the near future. It would make sense that these dinosaurs will end up scratching
each other's backs – Google treating the Yahoo directory the same way it is currently using ODP would be very nice Yahoo and all their paying customers… and money talks! If you have a commercial Web site, it could be perhaps worth if for you to pay the money to get listed in Yahoo, especially if Google starts treating the Yahoo directory the same way it is currently using the ODP. Getting that extra Description in the Google search results, and having the exposure from the directory listing, might be worth $299.00 for your business. It does catch they eye of a user, and some business areas are extremely competitive on the Web. Getting listed in the directories that Google treats so nicely gives you something else that might be transparent to most people, but it is important – PageRank! If you are in a competitive field you will need every advantage you can get… Google PageRank, is GooglePageRank is the fuel Ah, PageRank… so simple and yet so difficult to nail down exactly how it works! I'm not going into great detail about Google's patented PageRank formula, as you can find a lot of information about it on the Web. I will just mention the basics. PageRank is one very important factor that Google considers when it determines the relevance of a Web page matched to a search query. It is, of course, not the only factor it considers. It looks at the content of the page also, but as a general statement — if all things are equal content-wise, the page with the higher PageRank will be displayed first in the search results. The idea behind PageRank, and inadvertently Google itself, is that great and useful content on the World Wide Web is linked to by other Web sites more often than Web sites containing junk. Also, good quality Web sites are more likely to link to other good quality Web sites. This will lead to the fact that Web sites with great content having more links pointing to them than Web sites containing junk, and their Web pages will therefore be assigned higher PageRanks. Brilliant, in theory… There is always someone that will use whatever they can to get ahead of the game, which is why you will find thousands of high-ranking Web sites selling, or just pointing, to other Web sites selling stuff that will enlarge this and that, make you loose weight by eating home-made pills containing un-Godly things and gift baskets containing industrial waste — you get the idea! Obviously, there are ways to "artificially" boost the PageRank of your Web pages but we won't get into that here. As our Xara and art-related Web sites compete less for surfers attention than Web sites trying to sell junk, we should not try to artificially boost the ranking of our pages. Honesty works best in the long run, and it is also less aggravating that way, as Google is always improving their search algorithm and thereby catching and penalizing "cheaters." Note! I'm mixing the terms "Web site" and "Web page" a little bit, but bear in mind that PageRank and Google has to do with ranking individual Web pages, not sites. There are some indications that Google does take certain factors into account from the overall Web site when ranking the individual pages, but more of that later. PageRank in a bit more detail. Obviously PageRank is not all about the number of links. As I mentioned above, links from good quality Web sites are worth more than links from junkie Web sites. A Web page can have a rank between 1-10, with 10 being the highest. The index, or the main page, will 99% of the time be the highest-ranking Web page of a site. This is, of course, the fact because most links to a Web site point to the main page. Now, how do you get some of that PageRank? Well, try to get links from high-ranking Web pages. If you get a link from a Web page, which has a PageRank of 7, some of that "page value" will be transferred to your page. How much of that ranking is transferred, is not that easy to determine. It does depend on, among other things, how many other links exists on that page. The PageRank will be distributed or divided, to a certain extent, between all pages to, which the page is linking. In general terms - get as many in-bound links as you possibly can to your Web site! All those links. All Web pages indexed in Google have a PageRank. All links — external links between Web sites and internal links within your own Web site — are taken into account when Google determines the rankings. This is something you could consider when you are creating the structure of your Web site. As your index page has the highest PageRank, think about what you are linking to from that page (where you will be distributing that PageRank.) For example, if your index page contains links to other Web sites, some of that PageRank will be distributed/divided between your internally linked pages and the externally linked Web sites. If you only have internal links on your index page, all of that PageRank will be distributed to your own sub-ordinate pages, instead of "giving" it away to other Web sites. Think about which of your pages you chose to link to from the index page. Linking every single page on your Web site to the index page will dilute that PageRank between all of them. If you instead link to your most important, content-rich pages, more of that PageRank will be distributed to them, thus making them more "competitive" in the Google search results. Designing your Web site entirely towards preserving and optimizing the distribution of PageRank can make for a really annoying Web site to visit. Don't forget about your Web site visitors. You need to balance page rank with ease of use. How do I check the PageRank of a Web page?Simple! Go to Google and search for the "Google Toolbar", and install it for your Internet Explorer. This will give you a couple of more features, one of them being the possibility to see the PageRank for every page indexed in Google. Warning! Please, read the Google Toolbar privacy notice before installing. There are some issues that could be of concern to you if you are sensitive about your privacy. Do you really need the Toolbar? No, not really. It is a nice to have if you wish to obsess with how Google treats your pages. You can use it to see how changes to the structure of your Web site affect the ranking of key pages that you wish people to find. You can also check the PageRank of Web pages on other sites, to which you are considering linking. An empty PageRank indicator could mean that the Web site has been banned or is under some form of penalty from Google, and it could be a bad thing for your Google experience to be associated with these. By linking to them, you are essentially endorsing them, right? Normally an empty PageRank Indicator on the toolbar just means that a Web site has not yet been indexed by Google. You can read up on what the different stated of the indicators mean, if you wish. Essentially, when it is empty, pay attention!
Some last words about PageRank.The numbers indicated in the Google Toolbar are in whole numbers, 1-10. In reality, Google uses fractions of the same, for example 7.259 but only they know the exact value.
Getting one in-bound link from a Web page with PageRank of 8, might be better for your rankings that getting a couple of hundred links with Pageranks of 5.
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