Interesting: I ran a check on Google's Page Ranking for various online dating and social networking sites. The rating system goes from 0-10 (10 being the best). This is important, as it would imply that the higher the Page Rank, the better the Search Engine Optimization would be for that company.

That is, if someone type's 'online dating' as a search, a page rank of 9 will appear higher on the search results than a page rank of 8 or less.

So here's what I found:

Page
Rank - Site

9 --- Match.com
8 --- Yahoo!Personals
8 --- MySpace
8 --- Orkut (Google)
8 --- Chemistry.com
8 --- Friendster
8 --- People2People
8 --- Perfect Match
8 --- Skype
8 --- YouTube (Google)
7 --- eHarmony
7 --- JDate
7 --- Date.com
7 --- Lavalife
7 --- Bebo
7 --- Facebook
7 --- FriendFinder
7 --- iLove.de (Germany)
7 --- LinkedIn
7 --- Meetic (France)
7 --- MSN Dating (via Match.com)
7 --- OpenBC (Germany)
7 --- OKCupid
7 --- Black Planet
7 --- Dreammates
7 --- HotOrNot
7 --- Love.com (AOL)
7 --- True.com
7 --- Tickle.com
7 --- Yeeyoo (China)
6 --- Bolt.com
6 --- Cupid.com
6 --- eCrush.com
6 --- Gay.com
6 --- Parship.de (Germany)
6 --- Plentyoffish
6 --- MingleMatch
6 --- Six Degrees
6 --- Soulmatch
6 --- TableforSix
5 --- Baihe (China)
5 --- Black People Meet
5 --- Cherish.com
5 --- Click2Asia
5 --- Dating.dk (Denmark)
5 --- ePersonals
5 --- Mate1
5 --- Neu.de (Germany)
5 --- MatchDoctor
5 --- MatchRanger
5 --- Manhunt.net
5 --- Sexsearch.com
5 --- SinglesNet
5 --- SwingLifeStyle
5 --- TheRightOne
5 --- 8minuteDating
5 --- 96333.com (China)
4 --- Adam4Adam
4 --- Gaia Online
4 --- SportsFansMatch
4 --- Tianji (China)
4 --- WebDate
4 --- Webmate
3 --- 51Friend (China)
3 --- eRomance
3 --- JWoo
0 --- GreatExpectations
0 --- AmericanSingles
0 --- Friendscout (Germany)
0 --- LoveAccess


FYI, iDate2006.com got a page ranking of 6. We got the same rating as Did-it.com, which is a company that is experts on Search Marketing.

As a comparison, Google.com scores a page ranking of 10 (of course). So did the New York Times. NASA and the White House.

CNN, Yahoo, Dell, Hotels.com, Mapquest, eBay, Amazon and Columbia University got a page rank of 9.

American Express, Travelocity and Sony got a page rank of 8.

Scoring a 7 were Citibank, HSBC Bank, Coca Cola
and Pepsi, the NY Yankees, the NFL, Marvel Comics and Charles Schwab.

Google gives a ranking of 6 to Lancome, Revlon and model Pamela Anderson.

How did the other models do? Page ranking of 5 to Heidi Klum and Cindy Margolis. Unbelievably, Cindy Crawford got a page ranking of 3.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Internet Dating Conference
Social Networking Conference

Page rank is a measure of a sites credibility and popularity. If a site has been badly behaved and has been caught spamming then Google will dump the site from the page rank measure. The LoveAccess home page is at 3. Sometimes internal pages can be ranked zero, and the home page higher.

_________________
Mark Brooks
Editor, Online Personals Watch
mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com
USA 212-444-1636, UK 020-8133-1835

My Blog has a pagerank of 8 does it mean it is 8^3 times more important then my dating site? Last time I checked each level up is worth a factor of 8.

PlentyOfFish,

Popularity also plays a role too. Somehow Google knows that your blog is frequented with repeat traffic. I never heard about the power of three (^3) for a sites page ranking. What I do hear is that this number is considered very important among people in the know for search marketing.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Internet Dating Conference

This one is wrong because www.friendscout.com is a mistype page. The "famous" german friendscout can be found under www.friendscout24.com with pagerank 2 or www.friendscout24.de with pagerank 7.
Regards

Correct. I did the search late at night. You can get different results for different domains, such as

-www.SampleWebsite.com
-example.SampleWebsite.com
-www.SampleWebsite.co.uk (or other Top Level Domains).

I imagine there were some mistakes, but not many. The idea behind the list was to draw attention to the fact that some of the social networks and dating sites out there could be impacted in the long run if they don't keep an eye on this.

Google has implemented a whole slew of stuff for webmasters, including sitemaps and other webmaster tools to help their rankings in google. FOr the most part I hear it is good, but the web spammers need to stay on their toes this time because I have heard stories that google has used the sitemap product to detect spammers that submit their sites.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Internet Dating Conference
Social Networking Conference

Please add us to this list: LouisvilleMojo.com - Pagerank of 5 right now.

I think page ranking is a bit more than mysterious. Our largest and most heavily trafficed site, LouisvilleMojo.com usually ranks between 4 and 6. This morning it was 4, yet when I checked it just now it's at 5. Right now our corporate site, MetroMojo.com is ranking a 5 as well, yet there's very little traffic there compared to our social networking sites.

I've heard repeatedly that that pagerank is supposed to be partially transferred, so if your site is linked by another site with a pagerank of 7 it's far better than being linked by a site with a pagerank of 2. The lesson regardless is to make sure that all of your site cross-promote your other sites.

Best,
- Chuck

_________________
LouisvilleMojo.com ~ a MetroMojo.com city site
(502) 583-1008

Not necessary, i have to disagree when you say a website with higher page rank will rank higher than another website with less page rank for a keyword "Social Bookmarking" (i.e site with PR7 vs site with PR5).

Having a high pagerank does not mean higher search engine rank for a certain keyword.
The main thing that will make a website rank higher than another for given keyword is if this website has backlinks from high pr sites using a certain anchor text (in this case "social bookmarking).

Just do a quick test for any keyword on google and check the rank of the first position website vs the 10th position website and i bet that in most cases the one on the 10th position has higher pagerank than the one on the 1st position.

_________________
SEO Software

I think the best way to improve ranking is one way backlinks. Im not convince that the level of traffic to your site has that much affect on ranking. Your website should have ever changing content too as this suggests that the site is very active, which is why blogs often get a good ranking because people are posting all the time and changing the content.

I don't understand how some of the higher ranking sites actually get there ranking, i wonder if its the same rules for everyone or if there is any favourtism. Im not suggesting there is, but i have a hard time figuring out why google will only recognize certain sites and not others.

When doing a google search for the links coming into our website, it said there were only 8, however in reality there are actually hundreds and im baffled as to why google only recognize a miniscule percentage of the backlinks and disregards all the others

_________________
http://www.smooch.com

The lesson regardless is to make sure that all of your site cross-promote your other sites.