I'm following with great interest the NPR.org Morning Edition series on search engines and think it's great! But this morning's segment on Google had an error that will mislead many people and keep a myth alive that should have never gotten started in the first place.

The segment describes Googles PageRank (PR) as a system where pages are "voted for" to determine what pages and sites are valuable. This is true, however PR is only part of the story. Google has said for a long time and states on their site (http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html) that part of what they use is PR.

Sites that only focus on linking will see some good results from that effort as it now stands. However, the PR system is badly flawed and we expect it to be changed this year.

The problem is that PR can be manipulated and therefore the results cannot be trusted. Many site owners trade links with other sites to increase PR, and now some are selling links on sites with high PR to other sites. This corruption is rampent and as with every other thing that has been missused in the past, we fully expect it to be discounted heavily.

The other flaw with PR is that you have company sites that offer affilate programs. If I have an affiliate link to a site and a visitor clicks that link and buys something from that site, I get a commission. Affiliate links have also muddied the waters when it comes to PR being accurate.

I do have a possible solution to this problem with PR, however, and it is simple to grade it on a curve. New sites with just a few links to them at first will get a jump in PR to a basic level, after that PR does not seriously consider the links until that hit a very high threshold that is beyond the reach of most site holders to manipulate.

(hris