Few days ago Girish was wondering which were the top Mauritian-owned websites and in fairness it’s a very good question. I reviewed the Alexa list again and the following are the Mauritian websites that appear in the top 100 websites that people visit most regularly.

It is always interesting to see how Internet usage in Mauritius changes over time. The latest update from Alexa.com suggests that while social interaction is still the number one utility used by Mauritian net surfers, search is the next most popular activity.

If you’re into stats then here are the numbers; only 13 of the 100 most popular websites are Mauritians according to Alexa.

They are:

(1) Orange.mu (overall 10th in Alexa’s top 100 that Mauritians visit)
(2) Lexpress.mu (13th)
(3) Gov.mu (25th)
(4) Defimedia.info (28th)
(5) Myjob.mu (33th)
(6) Vinivi.com (43th)
(7) Lematinal.com (44th)
(8) Mcb.mu (50th)
(9) Lemauricien.com (55th)
(10) Islandinfo.mu (64th)
(11) Expat-blog.com (68th)
(12) Mauritiusturfclub.com (82th)
(13) Mbcradio.tv (84th)

The definition of Mauritian I’ve used is a little loose. We’re including websites here where the company is headquartered in Mauritius or primarily serves people in Mauritius. Two websites that I decided to omit from the list is the .mu version of foreign-headquartered multinational; Google.mu (2nd) and Servihoo.com (20th) as it redirects to Orange.mu. I’m open to sticking them back in if there’s enough of a protest.

Conclusion

Alexa is user centric method of collecting data where the user is required to install software which records usage, while obviously marketers & webmasters have access to their own site centric data. Ideally what’s needed and what would show the most actionable is network centric direct from the ISP’s. Alexa is completely inaccurate and can be gamed.

It makes sense to do that because the reported PageRank data doesn’t matter anyway. But they keep the public toolbar PageRank despite the fact that many more users see this. Confused?

You can see some screen shots on SEO Roundtables post on the findings.

I think it is a good idea that Google have removed PageRank data from the Webmaster Tools. For a long time both search engines and SEOs have told webmasters not to get obsessed with that factor anyway. It just did not make sense to keep it.

But then why do Google keep the PageRank data in the Toolbar when PageRank is clearly not a very good quality benchmark?

I believe it is due to the fact that Google have invested heavily over the years in the brand PageRank. PageRank is a brand more than a technology today.

For over 10 years Google have been telling the public that PageRank is equal to Googles secret formula for how to rate all information. From a branding point of view they have put much more into the PageRank basket than what is technically correct.

From a technical point of view it doesn’t make sense to report the PageRank data to webmasters – but from a branding point of view Google can’t live without it.

If Google dropped PageRank in the toolbar now and stopped using the brand in public communication they would need some other simple way of explaining what it is that they do so much better than everybody else (if their mind off course).

And why give up a really good and strong brand? Well, off course there is that little thing about the fact that PageRank is actually not really what the public think it is, but hey that’s just a minor detail, right?

PageRank does it job in the public toolbar. Its not very accurate, to say the least. But who cares?

Well, our clients do – because their clients – the general public – look at that toolbar and to some degree trust the green bar. As long as people do that PageRank will be important! As long as our SEO clients feel that their clients judge them partly on PageRank they do want to use that as a benchmark.

Should Google totally discount PageRank and also remove it in the toolbar?

Long term that would probably be the best and least confusing for all but I do understand the problems Google would have to deal with if they do. It’s not an easy decision but one that I feel Google will have to make at some point. The current solution – with toolbar PageRank visible but no Webmaster Tools PageRank is not good. It’s confusing; it sends mixed signals; and it makes Google look less trustworthy.

Your Google PageRank tells how important your website is. The importance of your website is gauged by how many websites link back to you. And it is not as simple as it seems. Even the websites linking to you too must have a good Google PageRank. This means the websites linking to you should also be linked to by websites being linked to other, well-linked websites. So in a sense, every website being considered for your PageRank should enjoy a higher PageRank.

The inbound links to your website are counted as “votes”. So the more votes you have, the higher PageRank your earn. You can view a website’s (including yours) by installing (if it is not already installed) the Google Toolbar that resides in the upper part of your browser once the Google toolbar is installed. In the Google PageRank button there is a green bar that ranges from 0/10 to 10/10. As a said, the websites sending you inbound links should also enjoy higher PageRanks (PR). The more links you get from higher PageRank websites, the less links you have to garner in order to attain a higher PageRank.

People have written complete research papers on how Google calculates PageRanks but if you are reading this just to search engine optimize your website, then the only thing worth knowing is that you should get inbound links from trusted websites that get lots of targeted traffic — this is the only thing that matter as far as your PageRank goes.

PageRanks used to be taken seriously a long time back, but not now. They do matter, but not to a great extent. You can enjoy top rankings in the search pages even with a PageRank 1.

Most webmasters/designers woke up to lower Page Rank and fallen rankings this morning as Google does another Page Rank (PR) update. Over the past two days Google updated its Page Rank toolbar meter. Usually this doesn’t effect rankings simultaneously, but this update is different! Some websites that lost PR as well as losing substantial placement in google as well. As I was checking my client’s rankings after the update, I noticed quite a few competitors’ sites had fallen quite badly. Looking at their PR confirmed that this time Google followed through with it’s threat against sites selling links, and not only lowered Page Rank, but rankings as well.

Websites that have quality unique quality content were the beneficiaries of updated Page Rank on their newer content. Some WordPress pages that I created 3 weeks ago now have a 4 PR. This is the fastest update I have seen in years. If Google continues to make quick Page Rank updates that coincide with changes in the index, then they will go back to being the most relevant search engine. I have been complaining for a while about Google’s watered down results, but this could be a new turn towards Google being able to get spammers and scrapers out of the top results.