Relevant Backlinks - Lessons in Love

[gadget]

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We all know the importance of having relevant backlinks, as opposed to just link building. I've just come across a site with over 12,000 backlinks but has only managed to establisg a PR3. I can only assume the backlinks are not relevant.

Having said that, surely there's sufficient relevance to get the PR up a bit?
Yes I agree that PR isn't the be all and end all but there must be some learnings in this for those of us trying to further understand the murky world of SEO?!

The site is .. Nintendo Wii .. good looking site btw.

I'd be interested to know what people's thoughts are on this .. well it is Friday!

[zinc]

it's PR 6...?

This site doesn't really need the backlinks, It's IGN which is massive in the gamer world so backlinks would be pretty natural for them, i.e. they probably don't go out link building.

[gadget]

Zinc.

The page link in my original post goes through to a page with PR3 (using my google toolbar).

However .. IGN.com: Games, Cheats, Movies and More .. ( home page link ) has PR4 but with only 6 backlinks.

I sure they don't need the backlinks, that wasn't my point.

Nintendo Wii .. PR3 .. 12,000 backlinks .. why not more?
IGN.com: Games, Cheats, Movies and More .. PR4 .. 6 backlinks .. ?

I am intrigued why you got PR6 and I got PR3 for this page though.
What did you use pls?

[smingle]

I also got pr6 ??

[Barry]

PR6 here too

[zinc]

what toolbar you using?

[WorldwideTrading]

I am seeing PR6 too.

Dont forget that toolbar PR is currently 95 days old, google often updates backlinks before toolbar pagerank so what we could be seeing are the effects of a google dance.

The last toolbar PR update was on April 30th 2007. More info on this site.
Page Rank Update or Export List History - PageRank - PR

Interestingly enough quite a few google datacentres are returning a PR3 for this site so I am assuming the new PR will be PR6 and the UK datacentres have updated first for a change.
Type the URL into this page and you will see what I mean:
Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find MyPagerank.NetGoogle PageRank Checker - Check Google page rank

[gadget]

Cheers guys. Sorry about this. I'm using a version that I only downloaded 4 weeks ago. It's Version 4.0.1601.4978-big/en-GB(GGIH) .. if that means anything to anyone?

[WorldwideTrading]

Cheers guys. Sorry about this. I'm using a version that I only downloaded 4 weeks ago. It's Version 4.0.1601.4978-big/en-GB(GGIH) .. if that means anything to anyone?

Take a look at the links I posted above. It dosent matter what version of the toolbar you are using google only updates the databases that the toolbar pr is pulled from periodically. One of the two links I posted above shows you the dates that google has updated toolbar pagerank and backlinks. Google is supposed to update pagerank in real time but will only do an export to be displayed on the toolbar periodically - about every 3 months.

[moredial]

Back links and their relevance used to be easy to calculate, now google is hiding a lot of info from us by removing the 'supplemental results' info against pages.

Links from supplemental pages were not worth anything - not counted at all. If a link page has PR0 then it also has no PR to pass to the receiving page.

If a link page 'looks' like a link farm, then its links have no value.

If there are many links from a page, say 100 links, then each link is only worth 1/100th of what would be the value if there were only 1 link on the page.

SEs have a limited database. Each one is different but some time back it was said that any links over 20 would not be recorded as links. Other folks say the first 80 links in a page are counted as links. Either way, not all links from a page will be counted.

Links from / to the same IP block carry less value than links from different IP blocks.

Links from pages that are relevant to the receiving page are of more value.

Links from authority sites - gov, edu, etc are of more value.

It really is a case of 1 + 1 <> 2.