Calculating PR for 4billion+ pages isn't something you do overnight ... maybe they just can't go any faster ?
True. Otherwise think of what happens when the index is 40 billion pages and there are far more complex rules in the algo. I had read somewhere that someone (GoogleGuy, I think) said that the PR is updated pretty regularly, but not the display PR that is used on the toolbar. My take is that PR is pretty important (PR of a page, as well as PR of a page linking to you). But, this gets obfuscated by the delays in updating the toolbar PR. Ajeet
I have found a few page ranks that are pretty strange - for example there are a few companies with PR7 pages that have only a limited number of back linkes - and where I can't find any back links with a PR greater than 4. In these cases there are also a huge percentage of the back links that are actually internal links from their own website (same domain, no sub domains).
What are you using to check the links for those sites? G doesn't show all of the links that are in fact pointing to your site. Do a search for the domain in inverted commars, then see what sites come up. There could be a flaw in the PR algo, but I doubt it (I have only seen maybe 3 or 4 sites ever that have a strangley high/low PR, without an explanation - I can't remember the URL's of the sites in question right now, but I may have bookmarked them... I'll try to dig them out - But the chances are that the errors have been corrected since then).
Google uses a huge cluster of computers for search and for other chores like PR update. Clusterred computing environment increases the processing speed and at the same time lowers the cost. Personally I do not think that the "cost" factor is stopping G from doing the PR update. Computer prices are at an all time low. It has to be something else (also)!
I believe that PR is a seperate calculation and not a part of the Google ranking algo. It is a time consuming task but they have had the same index size for some time now and it never used to take so long. My best guess, Google sees no need to update the toolbar PR frequently, since the tool bar PR has nothing whatever to do with rankings.
The delay in the updating of the green bar makes me wonder if Google is going to reveal something new with the next PR update. There's nothing stopping them from updating which leads me to believe they are working on something new, or have just decided to update less frequently. My fingers are crossed for something new
No they will not. You will not see any more PR updates. I say this becayse I noticed something very strange in their search results and they already said they are upgrading their PageRank system and I know what they are doing. If I am correct back links will mean almost nothing if they are not coming from RELATED sites.
Actually 4 billion sites is nothing compared to the computing power they have. They have over 16,000 PCs running shared ballance plus back-end servers so it should be a piece of cake.
What I have never understood, is why they wouldnt update the toolbar automatically -- this is assuming PR for a particular site is internally updated continously - Its my belief that the only reason for the toolbar is to drive webmasters to continously SEO their site and work harder on their site. As such, the only reason I can think of that the toolbar and pr doesnt change continously is because they want you guessing about what works and what doesnt.
yes i have been wondering about them revealing something new too.(perhaps something with more emphasis on one of their new technologies such as Topic sensitive PR like prbot says) something else that makes me wonder though is - seeing as they update PR alot more often than the toolbar PR - surely it isn't that bigger deal to bring the toolbar in line with their PR figures so why the delay? or maybe it is - cos i suppose toolbar PR would be inline with "normal" PR all the time if it wasn't a big deal (i readily admit i know nothing of the processsing power involved in all googles stuff) mine are crossed for something that is nice to my site
ROFL -- I know im new at this guys, but please dont just skip OVER my posts!!!!!!!!! At least I know im on the right track! Its my guess that either PR is updated at all the same time (meaning real pr and toolbar pr) or - they purposely use the toolbar to "motivate" all of us...
The calculation of PR is a time consuming process as it cannot be done piecmeal, it has to be calculated for every one of the four billion pages in the index every time it is calculated, as a change in any one of the pages affects other pages, which in turn affects other pages, etc etc, and is also the reason that the PR calculation has to be done several times in order to get accurate values. Google updates the links data more or less continuously, but the calculation of PR in the past was done on a monthly basis, so in effect the anchor text of links is in the word barrels as soon as the page is parsed and indexed but the PR might be up to three or four weeks old. In order to keep the links and PR in sync the data where the link:URL search gets its data from has been in the past updated at the same time, but recently we are seeing changes in the links data with no corresponding changes in PR. When ranking a site google does it in two passes, first it evaluates the relevancy side of the ranking(which includes the anchor text) and then modifies that ranking with the PR of the pages. Since the effect of PR on rankings has been very small for some time now, the use of a slighty outdated PR intoroduces only very small errors. In addtion to that there is evidence (updated PR in the Google directory for instance) that the PR used in the ranking calculations has been updated recently and regularly, so it appears that Google is just not updating the toolbar PR quite so often.
not sure i agree with this - i don't think Google will be wanting to drive every webmaster to SEO their sites. Also i don't think the reason they don't update the toolbar all the time is to keep you guessing about what works and what doesn't - as it's fairly well know that the PR bar just shows - well - the amount of PR you have - or -amount/PR of incoming links, which in itself doesn't effect ranking alot.(the PR that is - not the amount of incoming links) but i have to agree that i don't understand why they don't update the toolbar PR all the time - must be some reason for it.
Hi, With all this fuss about PR rankings, can somebody tell me whether Google takes that into account when giving rankings. I have found sites with PR 5 with negligible traffic and no rankings. So how does it work. Rakesh Anand
Rakesh, according to me (and many others) PR now has little (if at all) effect on the SERPs. There are lot of other... more important factors that you should focus on. Some of these factors are: incoming links, on page elements etc.
joeychgo: Some hold to this view but I think most hold that PR is updated after backlink updates not on the fly or all the time. We have had 4 or 5 BL updates and 1 Google Directory update since the last toolbar PR update of June 23. When they do a toolbar PR update they may have to convert the real PR into the toolbar 1-10 scale, and even if that is already done they still need to update the toolbar PR field for some 4 billion or so sites. They have proven they can still update directory PR, so I expect they could easily do the same for toolbar, they just have some reason why they are not. There are a number of idea as to why they are not that are floating around which you can read in good articles on the internet.