ClickZ: Google PageRank, Meet Yahoo! Web Rank

Relevance trumps rank

Ever since Google made public (by putting a metering device on its toolbar) its PageRank scores for each web page, Danny Sullivan has been shaking his head. The rankings caused search engine marketing industry convulsions, and it turns out that the rankings often have little to do with where a site winds up sitting in the search listings. Compounding this nonsense is the fact that Yahoo's new WebRank tool is doing exactly the same thing, rather than trying to improve upon Google's method. Sullivan showed that low PageRank pages often outrank those with higher scores due to greater relevance. Insecure site managers can test this themselves by playing with an online tool.

In the image above from the SEO-Guy site tool (click to enlarge), Forbes and Bloomberg have higher popularity scores, both scoring eight, yet they fall below even small operations like Ad Age when they prove less relevant.