Is Google PR getting more importance than is due to it? It would seem so considering the barrage of threads on different webmaster forums with respect to the impending PR update. DP, Sitepoint, Namepros all have various threads where one of the members seems to have noticed a PR change to one of his sites and declares that the PR update is underway. There are numerous replies to such threads, most of them inconsequential.

Originally, PR was designed in such a way so that the importance of a page could be identified based on a number from 0 to 10 - 0 being lowest importance and 10 being the highest. The logic is, if more sites link to your site, then yours is an important site and has relevant content. Fair enough. It went wrong when webmasters were able to manipulate the PR by linking their own sites to each other and also by buying links from other sites. This meant that sites with no valuable content could have higher PR than other sites which are more useful.

Alexa is another system which tried to rank websites. This was done based on the number of visitors visiting a site. Tracking was/is done by the Alexa toolbar. Since the number of people using the toolbar is miniscule the data captured is also skewed. Again webmasters have been known to manipulate results by setting their own site as the homepage in their own system with the Alexa toolbar installed!

It is apparent that both Alexa and PR are not a true reflection of the worth of a site but webmasters continue to patronize them. Usually the cost of a link on a website or the value of the website itself changes dramatically with a better Alexa and PR. Even though a number of webmasters agree that PR has no relevance, it will survive as long as there are webmasters obsessed with the ‘little green toolbar’ .

Share your views on what should be a better way to rank websites. Should it be a composite way by integrating the Alexa and Google PR algorithms? Or should it be based on a feedback system like StumbleUpon? Or is trying to rank websites itself a bad concept considering that it is so qualitative?