Case Studies
Case Study: Page Rank (PR)
With a PageRank of 9, an Ivy League university site's PR was practically exalted in its relationship with Google. A subdomain, linked directly to the site and sharing a domain name, had, astonishingly, a PR of 0. This kind of PR means its page authority is basically non-existent when it comes to Google's search protocol.
You would think that with such an august parent site the subdomain would have no problem with PR; but remember, Google does not rank sites-it ranks pages. A low PR did not make these pages invisible in search: PR is not the only element of SEO. At the same time, PR plays a role; and with such a low PR this university microsite had a lot to overcome. It also had some significant advantages, beginning with its access to the parent site. PR has more than one element to it, but it is mostly about links.
After all, it is through links that Google spiders find pages and index them. They evaluate the source of the links and the authority of the pages linking in. Even a few high-quality links (that is, links from high PR pages, whether from within a site itself or from an outside site) can increase a site's PR greatly. So in terms of PR, the single most important thing that this site could do was to get even just a few links from the university site.