Page Rank Update???

I don't think it does, Wendy! It it did, then you would see contant BIG jumps in SERPs at all times, which we don't. We do however see small variations which are due to changes in other factors: content, title tags etc.

One other problem with updating PR on the fly would be the fact that you are running quite a "heavy" process on the database. This would affect the speed at which SERPs are calculated and would slow down the server considerably.

IMO, Internal toolbar is only updated on a quarterly basis and is calculated on a backup database rather than the live database. This backup database is a "snapshot" taken 2-3 weeks before the update goes live. The toolbar PR is then updated after a few weeks and reflects the previous internal PR update. The "snapshot" effect is seen by webmasters who add new pages on a regular basis. Only pages that have been added to the site and crawled by Google before this snapshot is taken are ranked by Google.

minstrel: The dates are for this year and are based on past behavious. Nobody knows the exact dates, of course.

 

LOL... good point!

 

Yes, you've mentioned what "you hold" before... most recently when you were predicting that update on March 26, if memory serves. But whether you hold it or not, it's pretty much recycled nonsense, isn't it?

 

You would only expect to see "BIG jumps in SERPs at all times" (1) if the PR updates were themselves big changes and (2) if the major determionant of SERPs were PR, neither of which is likely to be true if PR is continuously updated.

A frequently stated but nontheless erroneous objection to the concept of more-or-less continuous updating. What Wendy said was "Internal PR (what we cannot see) is what updates all the time"... nothing there about "on the fly". And as for server load, Google HAS the server capacity to handle continuous updating, which again does not have to mean "on the fly".

Except your estimates are obviously incorrect -- where's the quarterly update for March 2005?

Precisely. So why bother with the pretense that "prediction" is anything more than a blind guess?

 

Quick response to some of your queries, Minstrel. We are both tackling PR from opposite ends. I said that a major factor in calculating SERPs is PR and that it is not continuously updated. You reckon that it's not a major factor and that it is continuously updated. We would obviously never agree with each other.

The dates I provided weren't a "blind guess" but an estimate based on past updates as per my record. And, I am not talking about toolbar PR updates. To be honest, I hardly care when that happens. I am only talking about internal PR (which can not be seen) and hence, internal PR updates can only be recorded based on your own study. My estimate is based on a few months stats for a group of sites (both fairly new as well as well established sites).

When I said "Quarterly", I wasn't referring to the calender year. I simply said quarterly instead of "every three months". If you had read my post carefully, you would have seen that I said that updates happen "quarterly" and that the next one is expected to be in the "first week of may".

So, according to my post ....... the last one wasn't in March, but "three months before" the "first week of may", i.e. first week of Feb. Of course, critics of PR and disbelievers came up with some random theory blaming the new SERPs on a change in algo etc. etc. That was an internal PR update IMO.

If you don't believe me, simply wait .... not that long to go.

 

If I've got a site with an established number of backlinks, pretty constant traffic, serps etc, and lately managed one hi PR BL, the site shot up in the serps a couple of days later, the amount of this one BL can hardly be the trigger amongst hundreds of other links - wouldn't that be a sign for a more or less continous internal PR update?

 

Generally it is every 3 months or so which means one is now overdue.

It's only a thought but I have an idea that the update has happened but it just isn't showing up yet as Google are up to something else...at the end of the day they make the rules so there's not a lot you can do!!!

 

When I see this thread, I can visualize a group of people standing around with sticks in their hands, beat the ground where once a dead horse was.

 

Maybe not. But to correct something -- I didn't say PR wasn't "a major factor", I said it wasn't "the majot determinant" -- it's one of many.

We've been down this road before. There hasn't been enough regularity in some time to predict updates -- as evidenced by the repeated "predictons" based on tables of data that fizzle out to nothing, the most recent being one for March 26 by bobmutch.

I'm always reminded of people who predict the end of the world. Then, when it doesn't happen, it's like, "Oh... minor miscalculation... it shouldn't have been March 26, 2005... it should have been October 4, 2010".

 

Does PR influence SERPs ? - yes it's part of the SERPs algo.
Does the visual PR (ie TBPR) bear any resemblance to the PR used in the SERPs algo ? - yes, but only for a second or two after the TBPR has been updated.
The only things I can work out that TBPR is useful for is: co-op weight, and for link exchange negotiations.

It is damn frustrating that G don't update the visual PR regularly, but as with BL's, they must update internally used figures much more often than they update what we can see from the outside - else SERPs wouldn't change between visual updates.

 

Good one Tommy D.The bottom line is Google is playing games with the entire webmaster/ SEO community. I can see that threads like this may never end as a result of this...oh well make s for good conversation

 

jlawrence,

really? the visual PR is showing us a ranking in PR that might be different to the (real) internal Google evaluation?
Pfff, that´s like shadow boxing. I wonder what PR the websites´have that I am observing. I hoped I could even mouve upwards from PR 6 to 7, always if I add a bit more content and additional links.

Best,




"Courage is the great virture of those who seek the spiritual path." P. Coelho

 

So what generates PR ? - backlinks perhaps (the more relevant the more PR passed). So if adding backlinks can increase SERPs without a visual BackLink update then it follows that PR can be updated without a visual PR update.

 

jlawrence: The PR update is a calculation that takes about 11 days. The PR update calculation is differnet than a BL update but they are usually done at the same time. In the past when the toolbar PR updates where done once a month the BL updates were done at the same time. I hold that when ever there is a BL update there is for the most cases a real PR update at the same time.

The PR calculation as it was orginally given is a mathmatical equation that did take into where the backlinks were relevant or not.

Jordi: Toolbar PR is a scale with 10 units. Real PR is a completely differnet number. All new pages in the index start out with a RPR of 1. I am guessing that the RPR of a TBPR10 page would be somewhere around 10 to 50 million.

 

There are many factors in calculating SERPs. I believe that if you get a text link from a high PR site, that affects your SERPs (positively) in three ways:

1. The anchor text used for that link gives a boost to SERPs related to that anchor text
2. SERPs also get a boost due to a higher number of links (One more link, a little more boost). But, I also think that the PR of the link page also matters (not just in PR calculations, but by itself too). So, if you get a new link from a PR1 site (let's presume that this is a PR1 in the database too), it won't be as good as a PR4 link.
3. Finally, the BIG boost comes when PR is updated of course

So, the PR of an inbound link affects your SERPs in more than one way. You do see some changes initially, but the major changes appear when PR is updated.

jlawrence: Toolbar PR lags behind internal PR by between one to four months.

 

can i ask how in the world you know that?

 

BTW, PR has nothing to do with relevance of links

 

wendydettmer: There are articles on how to make the PR calculcation faster and people in the know discuss what they think the time is that it takes to do the PR calculcation. That is one way.

The other way is that if you post a page every day on a site (that gets visited well by the Googlebot) and then when the TBPR update happens just see what documents get TBPR and which ones don't.

So there is a cut off date when they take a snap shot of the index and go and do a calculation on that snapshop. Any documents that are added to your site after that date will not be in the snap shot. This way you can get a rough idea of how long between the snap shot and when the new TBPR starts to show.

There are a few other factores in there also, such as how long it take to get a document on your site into the index (about 2 days on most sites).

 

Actually I have to disaggree. In my view relevancy has all to do with how MUCH PR is passed.

 

lol, well it looks like starting this thread wasn't such a bad idea afterall... thanks for the input everyone. I have read through what everyone has to say about the subject and now I'm just trying to make heads or tails of what is true and what isn't