Thanks, then I guess it’s a FF browser issue. With my old blog I could clearly see the page rank at the bottom of the screen (I think I have an extension or something installed that allows it to display). But I get P: n/a where the pg. rank should be now.
I guess it’s fair to add this considering Denis has given you a correct response:
Who gives a DAMN!
I hope I’m not veering into off-topic subject matter, but I’d like to hear a little more about what you meant (I also don’t know what “PR5” is short for & would like to know). I thought google page rank had something to do with how high your blog posts would appear in a search. Am I wrong? Or does it not matter?
PR = PageRank (i.e. the thread topic), so “Still PR5” meant your pagerank is at the same level you mention in your first post. And yes, Google does use pagerank as part of their ‘search heuristics.’
PR5 is short for “Page Rank 5”. It’s after the founder of Google Larry Page and yes it will affect how high your blog posts appear in a search. It also affects how often Google revisits your site to pick up new content and because it is based off of the incoming links it is often a good predictor of what other search engines will do. Here is what Google has to say on it:
http://www.google.com/technology/
Your site is showing up with a 5 rank in two different Firefox toolbar plugins that I have running if I visit “http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/”, but it shows up unranked for “http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/index.php.” To the Google spider those are two different addresses and only the main one has been ranked.
Your individual pages are showing up with ranks of zero and that is because you are using custom permalinks. If you use the standard permalinks instead of the long style all your posts will probably share the same PR as your main page, either a 5 without the “index.php” or unranked with it.
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
If you use the standard permalinks instead of the long style all your posts will probably share the same PR as your main page
More info: http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_Wordpress#Permalinks
I can’t use custom permalinks because I’m trying to use mod_rewrite to preserve visitor’s ability to get to my WP blog using old format links fr. my old TYpepad blog.
I’m bummed that none of my individual pgs. will be ranked. Perhaps that’s why I’m getting half of the site traffic I got when I was w. Typepad (I’m 5 wks. from my blog migration so I think Google should’ve caught up to me fully by now).
I wonder what’s more important in the overall scheme of things, retaining use of the old links or getting pg. ranking for all my individual pgs.
I’d like to hear what you all think about this…
Tomhanna, I’m confused by what you said about my site having custom permalinks & that they show up w. no ranking.
I just read the Codex link offered by macmanx above & it says:
Permalinks are enhancements to your existing URLs which can improve search engine optimization by presenting your post, page, and archive URLs as something like http://example.com/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/ rather than http://example.com/index.php?p=423.
How are my permalinks diff. than the first permalink listed in this passage? It hought they followed that structure.
I wish someone would take a stab at my question above asking if you had a choice bet. retaining visitors using your old blog permalinks (& using mod_rewrite) & using a more search engine friendly permalink structure, which would you choose? I’m guessing that most would choose the latter.
If so, & if I decide to ditch my mod_rewrite permalink conversion rules, how would I change my WP permalink structure to be more search engine friendly?
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
I wish someone would take a stab at my question above asking if you had a choice bet. retaining visitors using your old blog permalinks (& using mod_rewrite) & using a more search engine friendly permalink structure, which would you choose? I’m guessing that most would choose the latter.
I would choose “using a more search engine friendly permalink structure” and either place a search field in my custom 404 page, or use this plugin: http://wp-plugins.net/index.php?id=370
how would I change my WP permalink structure to be more search engine friendly?
http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_Wordpress#Permalinks
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/boost-search-engine-optimisation-seo-using-permalinks/
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
Personally, I used /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ as my permalink structure, but I recently changed it to /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. I have set my site to strip the /archives/ from all incoming links and issue a 301 (permanent redirect) by adding this line to my .htaccess file:
Redirect permanent /wordpress/archives/ http://www.macmanx.com/wordpress/
(Thanks to Tom Raftery for helping me with that.)
Richard, the first permalink in the example is a custom permalink – that’s why it’s “instead of”. The second in the example is the default. The default achieves a higher Page Rank “out of the box” from what I’ve seen.
There are actually two separate issues at play here. One, which you asked about initially, is Page Rank. The second is search results. Page Rank is only one part of (Google) search results.
The search engine advantage to the first type of permalinks (which are not the default and are therefor “custom”) is that if you are careful to use keywords (in the example, My Cheese Sandwich) in your post titles, you will end up with the keywords in the URL. This is supposed to improve search results by telling the search engines that your page is really really really about those keywords.
Page Rank, which is what you asked about, is a separate issue and from what I’ve seen the “?p=423” style standard permalinks perform better on Page Rank than the “05/23/my-cheese-sandwich” style. Where you will end up in actual search results (for Google) is a function of Page Rank and other variables, including whether you have keywords in the URL.
The only problem is that with Page Ranks of zero on your post pages compared to a Page Rank of 5 for your main page, Google would have to give a lot of extra weight to the keywords in the URL to make up for it. And as I wrote before, Page Rank isn’t used by the other search engines but because what it measures is important to all search engines it’s a good proxy for determining how other engines will view your page.
That explains things better. But unfortunately, I don’t know how much weight to give to ea. issue in terms of what’d be best for me. You seem to be saying that whatever you gain from google search results via keywords is more than offset by the loss of the google rank for the posts.
I would think so, but bear in mind that if these are exactly the URLs you were using before, your PR did not change simply because the backend software you use changed. If your search results were acceptable before, they shouldn’t change.
Hi,
You will have to excuse me but I am new to the pc.
I have an e-book selling websites www. ebooks4u. tv
I have had the site for about 2 month before I noticed a google page rank of 1.
I have since got a few hundred inbound links to my site and about 25 out bound links, 1 or 2 links are pr5 sites.
Ok now for my questions how often does google update page rank?
I have been advised to join a traffic rotator website to get more visits to my site, will this help with my page rank or is it just a waste of time?
Thanks in advance.
Regards Brian
[Moderated – non wp link broken again]
