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. TheNetFool.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.

The Net Fool’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 The Net Fool “Fair Value” ranking.

Q2 2008 The Net Fool’s “Fair Value” Pagerank Analysis

Website Name
PageRank
TNF “Fair Value”
 Valuation
6
6
 Appropriate
6
6
 Appropriate
5
5
 Appropriate
5
4
 Overvalued
5
5
 Appropriate
5
5
 Appropriate
5
5
 Appropriate
4
4
 Appropriate
4
5
 Undervalued
4
3
 Overvalued
4
4
 Appropriate
4
3
 Overvalued
4
4
 Appropriate
4
4
 Appropriate
4
4
 Appropriate
4
3
 Overvalued
4
4
 Appropriate
4
4
 Appropriate
4
4
 Appropriate
4
4
 Appropriate
4
5
 Undervalued
3
3
 Appropriate
3
2
 Overvalued
3
2
 Overvalued
3
4
 Undervalued
3
3
 Appropriate
3
6
 Undervalued
3
4
 Undervalued
3
3
 Appropriate
3
4
 Undervalued
3
3
 Appropriate
3
3
 Appropriate
3
3
 Appropriate
3
4
 Undervalued
2
3
 Undervalued
2
2
 Appropriate
2
1
 Overvalued
2
3
 Undervalued
2
3
 Undervalued
2
2
 Appropriate
2
2
 Appropriate
2
2
 Appropriate
2
3
 Undervalued
2
2
 Appropriate
2
2
 Appropriate
2
3
 Undervalued
2
3
 Undervalued
1
2
 Undervalued
1
2
 Undervalued
0
2
 Undervalued
0
3
 Undervalued
0
0
 Appropriate
0
 3 Undervalued
0
2
 Undervalued
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! ;)

-The Net Fool

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