One of the more important tasks in relation to search engine indices involves the keeping this content fresh and up to date. To accomplish this, search engines have developed a number of procedures designed to refresh and update their respective databases. In all likelihood, the most popular of these events has to be when Google performs a backlink and PageRank update, which happens throughout the year at determined intervals.

Because the different types of backlinks pointing at a site directly affect PageRank, these updates tend to go hand-in-hand; and while these events may not generate the excitement they once did, the search engine optimization community does take notice when Google carries out these updates. For those who may not be aware, Google uses PageRank to provide a type of "quality score" for web pages in their index.

In order to view the PageRank of web page, you have to have the Google Toolbar installed. The toolbar contains a PageRank score, provided in the form of a green bar, for each page being visited. PageRank measures on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 (a full green bar) being the highest.

As mentioned, because backlinks play such an important part with PR scores, these types of updates usually take place at the same time. A backlink update is where Google actively revises the amount of links pointing to a site, while discounting links they consider to be old and/or aged. Because backlinks are considered such a valuable commodity, whenever an update is being conducted, those who depend on search as a key component of their ecommerce lives watch the results with loads of interest.

One of the standard practices when a backlink update is being conducted is to visit the various Google datacenters and perform backlink checks on their site in order to see if there have been any drastic changes. According to SearchEngineRoundtable, currently, the following Google datacenters have been affected by these updates:

72.14.207.99
72.14.207.104
72.14.207.106

In order to see if the backlink update has affected your site, visit any of the datacenters (as well as the standard Google.com page) and perform a backlink check using the following command:

link:www.nameofsite.com

However, it is important to remember Google only provides a cross-section of the backlinks pointing to the site; they do not show a comprehensive list. Be that as it may, whenever Google issues updates that affect their search index, people who follow-up do indeed notice changes, especially if they negatively affect their site.

A good place to follow when Google updates occur is WebmasterWorld. Here readers can get a good idea how other people may have been affected by the particular update being monitored. This is also a great place to get tips and tricks on how to conduct further research to see if you gained more backlinks pointing at your site. Fortunately, PageRank increases (or decreases) are easier to observe thanks to the Google Toolbar. Which features the green PageRank bar.

Another interesting thing to do is to navigate around and find out if any of the major sites experienced PageRank reductions or increases, especially with sites having a PageRank of 10. Because of the way Google scores using PageRank, only a certain number of sites have acquired this score, with one of the most famous being Apple's main site.

However, when I checked Apple.com this morning, I noticed the PageRank box was grayed-out; an indication the site has no PageRank information. However, if you navigate to the iTunes/iPod portion of the Apple's site, the PR score is a full 10, as are most of the sections. However, the .Mac portion of the Apple.com has a 0 as its PageRank score; although, a quick look at the link structure of this page may shed some light as to why:

http://www.mac.com/WebObjects/Welcom...cty=US&lang=en

Because the link structure has changed from when the .Mac portion had a 10 ranking, it appears as if these changes has affected the way the PR score is being passed on to this particular section.

All in all, this appears to be one of the milder updates, at least reaction-wise. WebmasterWorld has its normal commentary, but a lot of other forums seem to be paying only passing lip service to the events that began over the Labor Day weekend.

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Former WebProWorld Admin

"In order to view the PageRank of web page, you have to have the Google Toolbar installed. The toolbar contains a PageRank score, provided in the form of a green bar, for each page being visited. PageRank measures on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 (a full green bar) being the highest".

Is that correct? Then my pagerank varied from day to day and hour to hour, before I unchecked that green indicator. I think you must use tools like this

http://www.google-pagerank.net/

http://googlerankings.com/

Note that there is a difference between non WWW
http://multifinanceit.com/

and WWW
http://www.multifinanceit.com/

"A good place to follow when Google updates occur is WebmasterWorld. Here readers can get a good idea how other people may have been affected by the particular update being monitored".

One of the better "religious" forums.

"Another interesting thing to do is to navigate around and find out if any of the major sites experienced PageRank reductions or increases, especially with sites having a PageRank of 10".

http://www.siteall.com/guide/highpr.htm

Related tools:
http://www.marketleap.com/

Datacenter list Google datacenters
Page Search (Ctrl + F + Google datacenters

on this page

http://multifinanceit.com/it/marketing/links.htm

especially this link:
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/inte...ta-centers.htm

__________________
Kjell Gunnar Bleivik:: Financial information at your fingertips
Learn object oriented programming where it started

I checked the updated Google data centers, and Google is now giving me credit for 38 more links than before. My placement number is the same(#40) but there are over twice as many sites listed now. The previous number of sites for my keyword phrase was 40 million and now they list 97 million sites, so I feel that I have come up in the rankings even though my number is the same.

Thanks for the links to the data centers. It gave me a boost when I was thinking that all my hard work at optimizing, improving, and (very slowly) moving to css -- as well as working on getting more incoming links -- was for naught. Now I know that I must continue to keep working at it because there is an unbelievable amount of competition out there.

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http://www.happydaycards.com
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Well, that was a shock! All but 2 of my reciprocal links have disappeared. I never had a high rank, but I was working on it. Not hard enough, obviously!

Anyway, I am looking for a silver lining: surely this is an iterative process, and at some point in the 'cycle' I will see those links again?

Well, I am not going to hang around to find out. Starting tonight, I will update each page on my site with new content, alt text or links and refresh my Google sitemap. I've been meaning to add individual RSS feeds to more pages, so this is an ideal time to do that.

Thanks for the wake-up call, WPN.

kgun

no the google toolbar is not the only way to check PR. in fact, many don't even think the little green bar is accurate. however, it is the easiest way for non-SEO types to check because it's always there...

__________________
Former WebProWorld Admin

I have been working like crazy on this site over the past 4 months. We have grown amazingly - adding about 2500 users since the last update - my inbound links went from 1500 to 10,000 - I think i went from a 6 to a 7 too :D

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StoryCharms,

I suggest you don't worry about it. One of my sites lost half number of reciprocal links displayed by the command link:domain, that's more than 1000. But I don't want to worry about it. I believe the links are still there and it's just a matter of Google displaying it or not. I have a lot of pages ranked on the top while Google shows no back link.

Until recently, last week, I had a page with a rank of 4 listed at the top of a 23 million page search. I've never really had good page ranks but at one stage I was listed on the first page of every google search I'd targetted.

I've stopped google dancing now but in the past for sure page rank wasn't the most important factor - what seemed to matter more was the frequency of updates and the continual adding of fresh content, at least that's what I decided my success was due to.

I've even got a theory that about 20KB of text is about optimum for a page. Google seems to like that kind of number somehow. It's short enough to be readable online but long enough to be seen as fairly authoritive.

I've just got my first commercial lead - off some folks who only deal with face-to-face contacts, not web orientated at all, and know a bargain when they see one. It serves my interests anyway, so I don't care - I'm a "bush programmer" anyway - self-taught unqualified.

I won't care too much about page rank at all - I think I may have lost my top listing in part because of what I read about google yanking spam directories that simply mirrored DMOZ (google) - I lost 2 PR when they did that.

I think a lot of my lost ranks comes from not updating recently or adding much new content. It affects the frequency which google spiders your site as well. They stop calling if you start relaxing but google dancing for no pay is no fun at all and if you're uninspired how can you create content?

With my new commercial venture I'm going to build a monster site and just keep updating it. I don't know how central page rank really is. I know I could formerly get just about anything onto the google front page in the past.

you can also check PR without the google toolbar here:

http://www.prlookup.com/

I'm back in the crazy world of SEO again, oh joy! <--- I'm being sarcastic here.

I'm still listed right at the top of the few yahoo searches I checked. I don't think yahoo cares how often you modify your pages as much as google does, that seems to be the only variable, or maybe the missing factor is page rank itself? I can't really say because I've never had a good PR really and I was absolutely fine before.

I seem to have traded great yahoo listings in exchange for great google listings.

I used the <link> tag heavily on my last site updates. I might have hit some factor in google that penalises excessive internal linking or something (there being both <a> links as well as <link> tags to the same pages on a lot of pages now).

Yahoo! Just totally loves me. dogpile is an awful engine but I'm okay (not great) on there. Okay on Lycos and Alta Vista totally loves me as well. MSN is a bit patchy, some first page listings, some second,. some nowhere at all on the first 3. I couldn't be bothered to check any others.

I don't think "link farming" is worthwhile just because of google PR. I'd rather spend time creating more content than mailing a bunch of people trying to get links, I just don't think it's the most efficient use of time at all.

Hi,
I know this is about google and unfortunately my rank did not go up although my google links increased by 26, to me this once more confirms that all the sites that offer a so called tool to predict google rank are quite useless, just two days ago on one of such a sites I had a phenomenal increase of rank, but what I do not understand is, a week ago I had more then 3500 links in yahoo and today I have less then 800 what could have happen, and how come in MSN I have more then 3700 links why google does not consider such links, with google even with the increase of today I have only 55 links isn’t the discrepancy so great?

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I am puzzled by all of this. One site has 996 backlinks according to Google and yet I am hardly getting any visitors. I have an rss feed to keep things moving ans i update my Blog every week. Maybe the market is too competitive - digital cameras- and other sites with my keywords could have 1000's of back links.

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You are spot-on there. I was just checking my site stats, and I have had more hits from search engine results in the past week than the whole of August! When I checked the referring pages, I was top 5 minimum for every search. So link:~ and site:~ searches are not a goood indicator at all.

Do you not get many visitors, or do they just not stay long? I have just looked at your site, and I actually recognised it from a recent search, but I didn't stay there long either time. If you don't object to some constructive criticism, I feel your site would benefit from a little more colour and perhaps a different layout.
However, I have to agree with your final conclusion: that many other sites may be little more than link farms with thousands of backlinks. Again, I am speaking from the results of a recent search.

"I don't think "link farming" is worthwhile just because of google PR. I'd rather spend time creating more content than mailing a bunch of people trying to get links, I just don't think it's the most efficient use of time at all".

Link farming is often connected with spam.

If you want to maximize your company's / sites (short time) profit, there must be a optimum division of your time between bulding content and getting inbound links. Getting (more) inbound links may even be the most important thing on your to do list since there is a correlation between, ranking (in the Google index) and visitors to your site.

Correlation measueres linear relationships, and is neither a necessary not sufficient condition for causality

KW search:
Granger causality
sims causality

E.G.
http://ideas.repec.org/a/ecm/emetrp/...i3p569-81.html

If the pagerank of your site is m, I think you shall concentrate on getting inbound links from sites with pagerank n where n >= m.

If your goal is not to maximize your company's profit, the result is different.

Digression (example my own sites):
If you look at my sites in a small, screen 15 inches or less, they will not function. If you use text size above normal, the same thing happens.

Reason:
The sites are primarily finance related and people working in finance often use 21 inches screens. Few use screens less than 17 inches as far as I know.

Future:
But with the increasing use of mobile media, optimizing for smaller screens may be very important.

http://www.polymervision.com/

__________________
Kjell Gunnar Bleivik:: Financial information at your fingertips
Learn object oriented programming where it started