Google toolbar Update

I've seen some homepages getting their PR value up and down. Even some of my websites (two of them) have their homepage (and all the other pages, they are small websites with 7 or 8 pages) with a higher PR.

I have a website that all pages are now PR2 (and the only BL it has is a PR3).

 

My home pages didnt' change at all, but all my interior pages have changed very nicely. My directory has a home page pr 5, and all interrior pages are between 3 and 4. Very nice

Since rankings dont always flow from PR though, its hard to get too excited about it.

 

I haven't heard anyone mentioning SERPs jumps at the same time as this update so there you go... Not exciting at all. Only for 'status' I suppose. And of course the side-effect of PR showing your IBL campaign efforts are starting to show in G's reports.

 

ResaleBroker:

Well you would have to look at the inbound links that vote those pages PR. If you have a home page with PR2 and a sub with PR4 it would seem to be pretty clear that you have inbound links to the PR4 page and that is why it is higher PR. My SEO Tools page is a PR5 and it has 68 external outbounds and only 8 internal outbounds. My home page has a PR4 and it only has 8 external outbounds and 34 internal outbounds. There is no mystery there, my SEO Tools pages has more PR voted to it from external inbounds.

thebassman:

In what way do you think the algo was changed for PR. In the Ranking weight it gives PR or the way PR is voted to the site?

dfsweb:

How did you determine you had no links seeing how Google doesn't show all links, Yahoo doesn't always show all the links that you have either, depending if all the pages are in there index or not. What is the URL of the site with a home page PR4 that you don't think has any links?

Dominic:

I agree on the not jumping to conclusions. On the time frame which is an interesting subject I have been posting new articles and dating them for creation and revision. I got no PR on articles written on or after Sept 24th. So it was not a snapshot of data taken from a month ago. 13 days yes but not a month.

 

Shawn: McDar's tool is showing the updated PR.

 

But I do not see the new PR on your tool? Is it by design as you've explained earlier?

 

In reference to BassMan's statement on the algo changing:

Much simpler than that. The base scale of the PR ranges itself. It is assumed that the scale is a logarithmic one between 6 to 7, now it is adjusted slightly higher.

The reason for this is that there is a boom in upstart websites (one million in the month of September alone), new file types being crawled, and googlebot digging deeper. This all adds up and room needs to be made for those pages -- the Google Index is considerably larger and PR (as I look at it) is a finite number.

Since the base scale is larger, then the PR increments would become wider in range. The bar is raised to that next step, and as most of the posts around the forums are showing that this bar has indeed been raised (by virtue of apparant loss of PR).

If this indeed did happen, then it will require more backlinks to achieve a higher level of PR. But does that really matter? Not in my opinion -- think of it as a "stock split". You did not lose anything in reality.

 

I agree Ron, in that I see no indications that the PR equation has changed. The number of pages in the idex has changed, the allocation of True PR ranges to the toolbar boxes has probably changed, and on the average probably most sites actually have a higher true PR, even if the tool Google uses to obfuscate PR has changed to the extent that it appears that it is lower.
Not sure what you mean when you say PR is a finite number though, since range PR depends on the number of pages in Googles index, which is changing, and the way the pages are linked together which is also changing. The only constant I see is that the average of all PR must still be one.

 

I take it that you mean "True PR" as you termed it, must average out to 1.

 

That was what I meant to say Mel, one. One is a finite number. As you say the total PR cannot be exceeded, it is not infinite. I probably should have expounded a little more by saying that there is only a finite number of PR to go around.

 

What makes you think Google is "obfuscat[ing] PR"? The toolbar graph is just that: a visual representation of PR divided into 10 categorical ranges. Google isn't make a secret of that. It isn't hiding anything. I don't think anyone has ever been mislead into thinking that a toolbar value of PR4 means that PageRank equals exactly 4 rather than a range of something like 4.000000 to 4.999999 (or if you prefer 0.4000000 to 0.4999999... move the decimal point wherever you like; it makes no real difference) -- nothing is being hidden or "obfuscated" in that.

 

I think this definition of obfuscation may apply at times when it comes to that damn little greenbar -- the activity of obscuring people's understanding, leaving them baffled or bewildered

 

Using that definition, I suspect that more "obfuscation" results from some of the convoluted hypotheses about PR described in forums like these than from anything Google does...

 

LOL Minstrel
If you can use the toolbar PR to give us any insight into the true PR that probably lies behind it please do so, if not I will stick with obfuscate as a pretty accurate definition, Though I do agree with you about some of the theories being floated.

I do not agree that the True PR value of a toolbar PR 4 is in the range on 4.00 to 4.99, I think it is more likely in the range of something like 0.35 to 0.38 and PR5 is more like 0.39 to 0.55 again I think the word obfuscate fits nicely.

 

You're missing the point, Mel: have you noticed the word "rank" there in PageRank? It's a relative measure, not an absolute. The exact value really doesn't matter.

People are already way too preoccupied with the toolbar PR graph. If you are going to start obsessing about some mythical "true" value behind that graph, you are going to wind up in a psych ward...

 

If you can't elucidate, eschew obfuscatory interlocutions.

 

I wondered about that... it was kind of fun to see my PR come back on pages I had switched from html to php (I must have blinked because I missed it happening ), but I was pretty confident they were being treated the same way, once they had been spidered. I find it difficult to get myself worked up about it... my measure of success has got to be site visitors, not some green bar at the top of my page <g>