Ello, Okie I've read the Google stickys and checked on other sites about the whole update process, but I could use some clarification on stuff. I know this time around is only is toolbar export btw About a month ago external links appeared in my Google webmaster tools. Are the sample backlinks (eg. link:www.mysite.com taken from this)? I've heard even the backlinks in webmaster tools are not ALL that Google knows about. Are these links what my current PR will be calculated from? Also, the PR coming from the various datacenters is real PR, or TB PR? When calculating PR does Google use old PR of incoming links? Or new updated PR of backlinks (through an iterated process)? So let's say I have a BL from a site with PR6 currently, but they go to PR7 from update... Does my site get a PR6 backlink, or a PR7 backlink? Anyway, just trying to a handle on how this stuff works.
I dont think anyone here will have the exact answers and I dont think google will ever tell everyone how to rank high in there system... Getting strong back links of course matters a lot but you can calculate really the outcome of the pagerank... All these questions are ones that cant really be answered. =)
Here goes nothing: (1.) The public links you see are taken from all possible links you have out there. The links in Webmaster Central are a much larger picture of all possible links out there. So the public links aren't necessarily "taken" from your Webmaster Central links but they will overlap to a point. Both public links and Webmaster Central links are taken from all possible links. (2.) PageRank itself flows constantly, however, Toolbar PageRank is exported from a snapshot at a certain point in time. Any links you had before the snapshot are counted, links after that will be counted in the next export. (3.) What you see in the datacenters should eventually be exported over to Toolbar PageRank. "Real" PageRank isn't known until it's exported to the public DCs and it changes behind the scenes constantly. (4.) As I said earlier, PageRank flows so it uses what it's counted most recently. (5.) The power of that link is a function of the "real" PageRank so let's say you get a link from a PR6 site and it becomes a PR7 site, if that site lost links between when the snapshot was taken and now, the real PR could drop to a PR6, or PR5, etc.. but you won't know until the next export. Hopefully that makes sense. An aside: there is way too much focus on PageRank. If your website ranks, it ranks. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Unless you're in the business of selling "high PR links" (which shouldn't be the focus of buying links anyways) then I would worry less about it. Just my two cents.
Thanks alot for responding...that does make sense now And so the PR export to public DCs is what occurs every quarter or so?