How often does Google Update PR?

[Kromvel-spring]

1) How often does Google Update PR?
1a) Is it the same for all websites or not?
1b) If not, what matters? What are the factors influencing on that?

[tamecrow]

It's not been updated since March and is getting less and less frequent. The main reason for this is that it's almost irrelevant in the industry today, other than one factor affecting the power of inbound links, but even then it's minimal.

Don't spend your time concentrating on PageRank - it's virtually useless.

[martty]

Google updates PR daily.

[ctabuk]

Internal Pagerank - Yes hourly - or even by the second - the problem is that 9.99 out of ten questions on this topic relate to the dreaded Toolbar PR

[tamecrow]

Yep - got there before me, David! The PageRank itself is constantly being updated, but the only value you can see is the toolbar PageRank, which is now updated about once a year at best.

[mjtaylor]

I wouldn't say PR is useless at all. A few good links from relevant high PR pages will make a significant difference in a site's placement. And links from PR0 pages, virtually none at all ...

I do agree that concentrating too much on PR is not productive, but it is an important consideration in assessing the SEO value of a link. For example, if you are considering submission to a directory with a paid review, and there are two categories that are relevant to your site, and one page has PR2 and the other PR3, with the same number of links, I would choose the PR3 category page.

Cheers, MJ

[ctabuk]

Our first disagreement MJ - but - the toolbar pagerank of a site linking to you does not make one iota of difference -you can have a zero rated site 'with authority' ie a dot gov - that will trounce a site with a PR9.

I can understand why people think it does - but we did a real in depth look at Google's own links to its own home page - the PR went up and down like a yoyo - it's own Matt Cutts blogs did well - and some of those posts were zero rated. It's the page that matters and relativity to topic. Not the sites PR - but the pages natural internal rating.

Self edit - prime example

Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Earth Outreach zero toolbar pagerank

Now assuming that you have links coming in from a Google Alert -well we have touched on that previously - Google never ever ever looks at the toolbar pr - it looks for one thing and one thing only - relevance. Think about this just for a second. Where do bots crawl? Sites - Where is toolbar Pagerank? - on a Browser -it's not on the site!

[mjtaylor]

Does that mean you have agreed with all previous 500-odd posts?

Excellent!!

Not sure I understand what Google Alerts has to do with PR value as Google just sends the new pages that match your query ... and I don't doubt that a link from an indexed .gov page can be far more powerful than another page with high PR ... and I know the toolbar may be outdated ... but that doesn't mean PR is useless. It does mean you have look more deeply than the toolbar ... and I will leave that to Webmauts and my intuition.

I have also noted other changes in the Google toolbar since March, so perhaps they are exporting the updates for some sites but not all ...

Happy to be back, MJ

[myfreeforum]

I think the point here is that.

A. Google Pagerank is one thing and gets updated constantly

B. The #$!#! Toolbar Green (or not green) thingie is something else, and I wish they'd either update it or lose it because it causes confusion.

I have several fairly new sites with blank toolbars that get plenty of searches. Obviously they have pagerank, but the green useless waste of space has not been updated. I just hope that my surfers are not mislead into believing that PageRank means something.

Now, do you know how I really feel?

[Orion]

I agree with you both! (ctabuk & mjtaylor)

The main focus when searching for a site to try to get a link from is the relevance of the site... I wish more people would focus on the fact that this is Marketing and not just Search Marketing. Links from a relevant page will give you direct traffic! And they will help your Search ranking tremendously!

However if you have a page that's not on topic (even partially) then taking a peek at it's PR (even though it may be out of date) can help you to determine if it's a good link or not.

Crunching the numbers though, always go for a relevant link rather than one with a high PR. Find one with both and you'll have no worries.

[thegypsy]

Originally Posted by myfreeforum

I think the point here is that.

A. Google Pagerank is one thing and gets updated constantly

B. The #$!#! Toolbar Green (or not green) thingie is something else, and I wish they'd either update it or lose it because it causes confusion.

I have several fairly new sites with blank toolbars that get plenty of searches. Obviously they have pagerank, but the green useless waste of space has not been updated. I just hope that my surfers are not mislead into believing that PageRank means something.

Now, do you know how I really feel?

Well that is some sweet mana from heaven.... people keep confusing TBPR with PR .... there is a huge difference....

Orions points are great as well since the whole 'relevance' engine kicked in.... actual PR is important, but it is only a single layer in a far more complex onion that is the IR ranking/scoring methodolgies....

Once/If the TBPR dies, SOEs will have to go back to understanding how true PR is establised/passed as well as understanding other ranking factors....

[Orion]

Maybe if anyone has a good link to a post or article that defines the difference between tool bar PR (updated annually or semi-ann, which means almost nothing) and real PR they could post a link?

Might be helpful to many, including myself, I understand enough of it but couldn't really define it myself... =o) It's always great to get more info...

[thegypsy]

Ok. to start with... if one doesn't understand the difference, there is much work to be done in your SEO studies... a blunt fact.

I wrote something more than year ago when I used to rant about this; The Google Toolbar PageRank Demystified

The actual PageRank is alive and well, it simply isn’t as heavily a weighted factor as is used to be and is calculated, for the most part, on the-fly ... the ToolBar PageRank, is an oft updated metric (last around April 07) that is nothing more than a dated snapshot.

Actual PR isn’t a 0-10 scale, there are many instances in between..bla bla bla

The TBPR is only of value to the link buyers/sellers/advertisers and domain sellers. It is not much of a metric towards ranking in organic SERPs - a value metric to SEOs.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ………. I am thinking it is about time to do another rant about this… I just hate looking like a fool ranting about what is common knowledge amongst any SANE SEO people… which tend to be my readers these days… bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Orion

Maybe if anyone has a good link to a post or article that defines the difference between tool bar PR (updated annually or semi-ann, which means almost nothing) and real PR they could post a link?

Might be helpful to many, including myself, I understand enough of it but couldn't really define it myself... =o) It's always great to get more info...

Per Matt Cutts, "Roughly every 3-4 months we take a snapshot of PageRank values and export them so that the new values are visible in the Google Toolbar. "

I.e., TBPR is PR at the moment it's updated; then it gets stale until the next update.

See New Toolbar PageRanks visible

[edhan]

I would say we should not be concerned about PR update instead thinking of ways to add content benefiting the audiences. I am setting up sites that I want people to visit or buy my products / services so I would put my concentration to improve the content / products / services so I will get more visitors. I do believe if you add quality contents, it will eventually help you to improve ranking as well as sales.

Bottom line, we want quality and targetted traffic to our sites and not concerning too much about PR updating. This is my personal opinion.

[dartman]

Does the TBPR mimic the PR bar shown in the G directory?
ex - Google Directory - Shopping > Sports > Billiards

I've always used the directory data to get an idea of where we stand in the PR war compared to our competitors.

[Orion]

lol thegypsy... don't get all frustrated.. remember the majority of readers here in WPW are NOT experienced SEO's like us... thanks for the link there though, good article btw...

Thanks deepsand for the Matt Cutts quote there.. snapshot is a great way to define it, I couldn't think of it at the time.

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

Does that mean you have agreed with all previous 500-odd posts?

Excellent!!

Not sure I understand what Google Alerts has to do with PR value as Google just sends the new pages that match your query ... and I don't doubt that a link from an indexed .gov page can be far more powerful than another page with high PR ... and I know the toolbar may be outdated ... but that doesn't mean PR is useless. It does mean you have look more deeply than the toolbar ... and I will leave that to Webmauts and my intuition.

I have also noted other changes in the Google toolbar since March, so perhaps they are exporting the updates for some sites but not all ...

Happy to be back, MJ

Happy to have you back to - I always try to demonstrate what I mean - This was my top Google Alert today - from 9 on topic - I could not orchestrate this in a million years

Carmarthenshire County Council - The Right to Buy

It is a dot gov site with a toolbar PR of 2

Relevance first - Authoritive site next - bottom of the pile - guess

One more little fact - and I personally find this amazing - do a simple "linksto" Google.com - see how Adobe is the number one link to Google - Also Alexa shows up- It might not work in the US but I'm seeing loads in the UK - I'll dig them out and post them.

Adobe : Education Events

Your Cart; Welcome, Guest; Your Account · Sign Out · Contact · United States (Change) · Solutions. Industries: Education · Financial Services · Government ...
www.adobe.com/resources/education/events/ - 21k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
Macromedia - HomeSite 5.5 : System Requirements

Your Cart; Welcome, Guest; Your Account · Sign Out · Contact · United States (Change) · Solutions. Industries: Education · Financial Services · Government ...
www.adobe.com/products/homesite/productinfo/systemreqs/ - 19k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
Adobe - Acrobat : For Macintosh : Adobe Acrobat 7.0.7 Standard ...

Your Cart; Welcome, Guest; Your Account · Sign Out · Contact · United States (Change) · Solutions. Industries: Education · Financial Services · Government ...
www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3319 - 22k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
XML External Entity vulnerability (Adobe Reader and Acrobat)

Your Cart; Welcome, Guest; Your Account · Sign Out · Contact · United States (Change) · Solutions. Industries: Education · Financial Services · Government ...
kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=331710&sliceId=1 - 36k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this


All toolbar 9 - I'll grant that Well except for the 4th highest link to Google.com -it's a zero hehe

[williemanillie]

Originally Posted by tamecrow

It's not been updated since March and is getting less and less frequent. The main reason for this is that it's almost irrelevant in the industry today, other than one factor affecting the power of inbound links, but even then it's minimal.

Don't spend your time concentrating on PageRank - it's virtually useless.

Er, if page rank wasn't of value, Google wouldn't use it. It still has value. What that is I don't know. I've learned to get on the first page I will enter every possible variable to get there. I don't rank all attributes of SEO on a scale of order. If it is part of the Google's measurement, I use it.

Toolbar or not is irrelevant in my opinion. Outside of normal business hours and sleeping, I use a good amount of time in SEO and marketing. In my industry this is imperative.

[deilenberger]

In looking at what the PageRank green bar says - it says "PageRank is Googles measure of the importance of this page (#/##)

What's that REALLY mean?

Google's ranking of "Importance" of a page on one of my websites isn't really important to ME at all. What is important to me - is people find my pages, browse them and BUY things. That's the goal of my websites - to sell things. Google may not feel this is "important" - but for search terms I've targeted - my websites are consistantly in the top 5 listings. And for terms where natural listings don't get them in the top five - I use AdWords to drive traffic.

I'm glad I don't have to justify my websites on an analysis of importance by a search engine. My justification comes in the company continuing to be in business, and returning links to our pages at the top of the list. That's important to me.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by deilenberger

What's that REALLY mean?

PageRank, according to the patent application Google wrote, is a calculation of the liklihood of a random surfer clicking on a link and visiting that page.

So, the higher the PageRank, the more likely a page is to get traffic (in Google's estimation).

Then, what's important is that the visitor finds what they want or need and takes action to obtain it. So the SE's estimation of a page is important if we want the traffic from Google, but after that, it's up to the site owner to deliver.

Cheers, MJ

[cw1865]

The only pages that I have ranking well in google are old pages. I don't know what it is but on new sites, I can't get listed for fairly specific keywords. I would love to update the site with the old pages, but a lousy website that people see still sells more than a better site that people don't see. Yahoo/MSN are more generous for me.

A while back my PRs slipped and since then I only use it as a relative measure. On a daily basis it simply isn't particularly useful since it isn't going to change for a long time anyway.

Just keep throwing stuff up on the wall and see what sticks!

[coolguy27]

Originally Posted by Kromvel-spring

1) How often does Google Update PR?
1a) Is it the same for all websites or not?
1b) If not, what matters? What are the factors influencing on that?

The last update took place on April 28 to 30, 2007. After that Google stop or just delayed their updates, the reason behind that is PR is being used for buying and selling links which the Google frowned about...

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by coolguy27

The last update took place on April 28 to 30, 2007. After that Google stop or just delayed their updates, the reason behind that is PR is being used for buying and selling links which the Google frowned about...

To be more precise, it is the Google Toolbar PR, which is a snapshot of the actual PR, that is only periodically updated, and is now several months old.

The actual PR used in determing SERP is updated continually.

[Webnauts]

I love PageRank discussions. Not kidding you. What I love most in those discussions is what people understand about page rank and their comments if it is important or not:

Google explains:

Originally Posted by Google

PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.
Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Source: Google Technology

Google continues elsewhere:

Originally Posted by Google

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects Google's view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

Source: Google Corporate Information: Technology

My resume:

PageRank is an algorithm which assigns every web page a score that indicates how important a page is. And the importance of a page is calculated based on the importance of all other pages that link to it and from the number of links each of the other pages have. And some information I got recently, in their PageRank algo they included their site quality guidelines requirements.

Here is a side-info about this: Webmaster Help Center - How can I improve my site's ranking?

Because I love PageRank so much and I care about if more than ever, I have setup on our server this tool PageRankBot - Supplemental Results Detector (SEO Tool) and I want to install when I have time the desktop Java version. Reviewed by a handful of high-profile players in the SEO industry including Aaron Wall, Andy Beard, Dan Thies, Red Cardina. Should myself and all others be ashame of ourselves?

After all, are you very sure that PageRank important to you?

[HallieLee]

No matter how often Google updates its PR it will be the top search engine for quite awhile.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by HallieLee

No matter how often Google updates its PR it will be the top search engine for quite awhile.

Care to define "quite a while?"

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Care to define "quite a while?"

I just wanted to ask the same question.

[Webnauts]

Google are updating their PageRank. More: Google PageRank Update & Link Selling

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Google are updating their PageRank. More: Google PageRank Update & Link Selling

I can already hear the wailing & knashing of teeth.

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Care to define "quite a while?"

For the forseeable future. That could be quite a while.

MJ

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

For the forseeable future. That could be quite a while.

MJ

Foreseeable by you or by HallieLee?

__________________________________________________ ___________________

[wige]

"quite a while": An estimate of time during which Google will be the most used search engine, and which does not imply any particular date, time, year, century or epoch of geological time. In this instance, "quite a while" may last until the until the next pagerank update, coming "soon" (see below) or more than a lifetime, possibly even beyond the duration of human existence, but unlikely to extend beyond the end of time itself.

"Soon" does not imply any particular date, time, decade, century, or millennia in the past, present, and certainly not the future. "Soon" shall make no contract or warranty between Google and the webmaster community. Although "Soon" will most likely arrive some day, Google does guarantee that "soon" will be here before the end of time. Maybe. Do not make plans based on "soon" as Google will not be liable for any misuse, use, or even casual glancing at "soon." See also "when we feel like it".

(Soon disclaimer based on WoWWiki Definition.)

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by wige

"quite a while": An estimate of time during which Google will be the most used search engine, and which does not imply any particular date, time, year, century or epoch of geological time. In this instance, "quite a while" may last until the until the next pagerank update, coming "soon" (see below) or more than a lifetime, possibly even beyond the duration of human existence, but unlikely to extend beyond the end of time itself.

"Soon" does not imply any particular date, time, decade, century, or millennia in the past, present, and certainly not the future. "Soon" shall make no contract or warranty between Google and the webmaster community. Although "Soon" will most likely arrive some day, Google does guarantee that "soon" will be here before the end of time. Maybe. Do not make plans based on "soon" as Google will not be liable for any misuse, use, or even casual glancing at "soon." See also "when we feel like it".

(Soon disclaimer based on WoWWiki Definition.)

Far out.

Category:Silly - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki

Too much time on our hands?



__________________________________________________ ________________________

[crankydave]

LOL Wige!!!

So, will it be "quite a while soon"?

Dave

[kgun]

I was looking for Matt Cutts link and found that. In addition, I thought of posting a link to the "Home of PageRank"

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Originally Posted by Google
PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects Google's view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

500 million equations with 2 billion terms. I doubt those variables are independant.