I’ve been participating in this conversation with a few other bloggers since before the She’s Connected or Blissdom Canada conferences, the noise just got louder after they were over and we all went home.

So I ask you the question… does a high scoring Page Rank on a blog equal achievement? Success? Have you ARRIVED if you finally reach a Page Rank of a 5 or more?

In my humble opinion… NO!

Checking your Page Rank, as the only method of ranking a blogger, in the PR world is as antiquated as using a dial-up telephone, having a pager or checking your My Space page!

I don’t know why some (not all) PR groups {Public Relations/Ad Agencies & Marketing Companies} hold onto them so dearly – they mean very little when it comes to influence and knowing who your key influencers are is where it’s at!

“They” tell you that your Page Rank is based on how many inbound links you have, from within your blog and coming from the outside. I looked it up on Wikipedia to see if I could find more specific information and was met with a whole lotta mathematical jargon! With words like, algorithms, probability distribution, eigenvector of the modified adjacency matrix and iteratively or algebraically… my head is spinning!

To add injury to insult, that little green bar that we seem to covet so much… is only refreshed and updated a couple times a year… if that. I heard a rumor that in April 2010, the last time it was refreshed, they may not update it again. **UPDATE: As of January 20, 2011 Google Page Rank finally refreshed!**

I was under the impression that your Page Rank is based on the age of your blog and if you haven’t ticked off the Google gods by doing something despicable by their standards.

Here’s an example regarding age of blog: If  you have a yourblog.Blogspot.com blog, the Page Rank checkers see the Blogspot.com domain and ranks your blog based on the age of Blogspot. Not how long you’ve blogged at yourblog.blogspot.com. So a blog with good and frequent content that is fairly new can have a better PR ranking than an older more establish blog which is on their own domain or over at WordPress.

When I moved to my own domain (which actually isn’t really my domain, it’s a simple redirect still within Blogger/Blogspot, which is owned by Google) in April 2010 I too was penalized for jumping ship and am now sitting at a ZERO! **UPDATE: As of January 20, 2011 I have been scored a 3**

The ongoing dilemma and it’s not a new one, the conversations go back to at least 2007 in the blogosphere, is that there are many who do reviews or giveaways for brands and are chosen or rejected strictly based on their Page Rank alone.

The trouble with this thought process, is that they {these PR agencies who only adhere to this misguided practice} are missing out on some pretty fantabulous bloggers who are key influencers in the social media world.

PR Groups need to take the time to get to know the bloggers they’re reaching out to. Do a little search, spend some effort digging into the experience and reach the blogger has. I’ve known people to have been the major force behind a social media campaign’s success, we’re talking influencing 7 generations of participants and they’ve been turned down by agencies to review a $30 product.  This is one of the biggest complaint I hear from bloggers.

Here’s my message to PR companies that may be reading this… take the time to do due diligence and actually get to know who you’re communicating with, take more than their Google Page Rank into account.

For example, I may have not have the most favourable page rank in some estimations, but if you were to get to know me, you’d know that I’m a Social Media Director for a company who specializes in Viral Social Media and SEO Marketing, which can locate the Key Brand Influencers and deliver an increased Social Lift! I have been the top influencer… #1, numero-uno… in multiple campaigns with nationally branded companies and products.

I guarantee… there will more to the blogger than meets the eye!