The points most of you bring to the table here are pretty valid and I don't personally disregard the PR9 site theory nor do I disagree with the high asking price. But that's because for me, what I've learned through all of my years in SEO and even BH SEO is that the only thing that matters when it comes to ranking are IBL's from niche authority sites. Without getting too deep into it, there are only two major search engines I've ever aimed for high ranking on, and that's Google and whatever name Microsoft is calling itself presently. Yahoo always fell into line from both of those, minus the paid/Overture system.
Funny enough though, PageRank died for me in November 2003 during the infamous Florida update. After that, it became strictly about finding niche and even sub-niche authority sites. More is not better at all. And furthermore, PageRank means absolutely dick. Because when I used to have my blog (you can archive.org it and look for the post), I had spent a good year reverse engineering a then mythical algorithm that Google used, and after figuring out the majority of points it relied on, I was able to uncover sites that looked like a piece of shit, and had a low PageRank, but its TrustRank (the real Google algo) was so fucking high that even though the site would command a $5/mo link it had more weight on it than most PR8's or even a PR9. Those sites with the high PR would command $2500+ per month, and you could get the same authority love from just two or three of the cheap ones with the high TR but low PR.
I'd take you up on the challenge and bet your ass I could outrank you for just about anything within a reasonable period of time by using links you'd never consider to be valuable. But who gives a shit about proving it to be true anymore because bragging rights and street cred don't even hold its weight like it used to, so fuck it.
Funny enough though, PageRank died for me in November 2003 during the infamous Florida update. After that, it became strictly about finding niche and even sub-niche authority sites. More is not better at all. And furthermore, PageRank means absolutely dick. Because when I used to have my blog (you can archive.org it and look for the post), I had spent a good year reverse engineering a then mythical algorithm that Google used, and after figuring out the majority of points it relied on, I was able to uncover sites that looked like a piece of shit, and had a low PageRank, but its TrustRank (the real Google algo) was so fucking high that even though the site would command a $5/mo link it had more weight on it than most PR8's or even a PR9. Those sites with the high PR would command $2500+ per month, and you could get the same authority love from just two or three of the cheap ones with the high TR but low PR.
I'd take you up on the challenge and bet your ass I could outrank you for just about anything within a reasonable period of time by using links you'd never consider to be valuable. But who gives a shit about proving it to be true anymore because bragging rights and street cred don't even hold its weight like it used to, so fuck it.
