Real Page Rank I have just written an article on Real Page Rank. It looks at the difference between Real PageRank, toolbar PageRank and Google Directory PageRank. With the PR toolbar not being updated for 93 days, many are claiming PageRank is dead. In this article I explain the difference between Real PageRank and the PageRank displayed on the toolbar and in the Directory. Real PageRank that is the heart of Google’s system for ranking web pages is alive and well and has been updated 4 times since the last toolbar update!
What makes you think that? PR and Backlinks could be updated continually. The displays of Backlinks have been updated more that the display of PR recently. There is no logical reason of which I am aware to deduce that an update of the displayed backlink count bears any relation to an unpublished PR count.
"Google updates their backlinks about once a month. When the backlink update have been completed the number of backlinks displayed changes. At that point people will see a change in their webpage rankings as their new backlinks have been given credit. It is at this same time that Google updates the real PR. " Yes, this seems to be an old manner of thinking.
Will.Spencer/PRBot.com/schlottke: PR is not updated continually as it is a pretty major job to do between 40 or 40 million iterations on the whole index and give each page a PR value. BL are not updated continually either as after a BL update every one that has new BLs (not new displayed BLs but those that have got more BLs since the last BL update) gets better rankings. I have not been able to get very good data on the backlink update history but from what I have been able to find, it would usually before the toolbar update. That we have had a Real PageRank update since June 22/2004 is a given as the Directory Displayed PR has been updated since June 22. Since we have had 4 or 5 BL updates and no toolbar update I would agree with that. But we have had a Directory displayed PR update and it is more current than the toolbar (I don't mean in time but in value) so we know we have had at least one real PageRank update. As it was Google custom to update the BLs before they did a toolbar update (I believe the pratice was to do a BL update, a Real PR update and right after that to do a toolbar display update) in the past, I am presuming that they are still doing that. The only thing they are changed is they have not changed the toolbar displayed PR. Also 4 BL updates in 93 days is not out of line with past history. Thank for the feedback.
Blah to PR! Concentrate on your links, watch your serps and b*lloks to PR - I'm fed up of hearing about it, reading about it and watchin that damn fookin toolbar
I agree with most of what Bob has said. PR update is a major task considering that Google's got an index of around 4 billion plus pages to rank. Each PR then depends on the PR of the incoming links, which then depends on the incoming links to the pages with the Backlinks and so on ...... Hence, the multiple iterations. But Bob, 40 million iterations????? I don't think so! Even running 20-50 iterations would be a major task and with such a huge database, it would take a lot of time (I read somewhere that it takes a couple of days for the entire PR update, although I don't believe everything I read) Accurate BL info is needed to calculate PRs. Hence, a BL update must take place before a PR update. In the last three months, we have seen that Google has shown changes for BL info a few times (4 times??). But, G is no longer showing accurate BL info, for whatever reason and for all we know, maybe they only update BLs once and just changed how BLs are displayed 4 times!
dfsweb: 4 BL updates with in 93 days very similar to their past history. In the past from what I can tell they updated the BLs then the Real PR ToolBar PR. If you take a look at my Page Rank Update List there is a forum coverage link for each update. On the iterations I said between 40 and 40 million. For a simple link to link 20 to 40 interations works. For the internet I really don't know how many interations Google does. I am thinking it is more than 40. I am reading an article on baseRank and how the interations are much faster on that system. So I need to do more research on that. I was just thoughing figures out but I can see that some body might thing I though it might me 40 million. Good point! On the BL update point of yours that is possible. But I don't think they are only going to update BL once in 94 days. 4 in 93 days is inline with that they have been doing for the last 4 years.
My reasoning consists of the following two unconnected observations: 1. If backlinks internal to the Google database were only updated every two-weeks or so, contant SERP fluctuations would not be as significant as they are. In addition, there would be marked SERPS jumps after each backlink update. 2. If I had no way to determine how the internal backlinks were updated, I would not make statements about how internal backlinks are updated. I recommend being just a wee bit more cautious than that; forum posts can haunt you for years.
I tend to agree with Will. If you look at the way Google functions internally, you can see that as each page is parsed it posts in the links database what ever links it finds in the page being parsed. That data is available to Google whenever they want to make it public. IMO it may be a mistake to assume that the only links data Google have is the same as they show to the public, and to understand that you only have to compare a link:URL search with an @URL search in Google to confirm that they are not showing us everything they know about when it comes to links.
I take it that your post means that you have not read The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine ? This is the paper written by Larry Page and Sergy Brin in the early Google period. It may be that there are minor changes to the exact methodolgy since then, but IMO the basic structure is still intact today.
LOL! Yes I have read it, but that paper only describes the basics and leaves most of the real important stuff out. That paper is also available on http://www.ooomooo.com
If you have not only read that but studied it you will be able to see that there are certain relationships regarding rankings that come about because of the mechanisms they use internally. For instance every wonder why Page titles and anchor text links are so important in google?
Yeah, I have derived several theories about PR from reading the paper but I also suspect they pay weight to how many people click on search results links as well
I have never seen any evidence that clicks affect rankings, any evidence handy? or even any evidence that Google even tracks the clicks on all search results?
Hmmm, Sept 8 2004 Toolbar Update :: someone has seen this update ? Nat p.s. Very interesting reading, thanks
Will.Spencer: Well we do have a document showings the general model of Google and we do know that backlinks are updated about once a month. We don't need to know how, to know that they are! Contant SERP fluctuation can be attributed to algo tweaking. There are marked SERP jumps after every backlink update. When the monthly backlinks are updated their is an index shift. There are new sites introducted, some can be dropped out of the index, and other sites rankings change. Google states this quite clearly in there FAQ on "Why does my page's rank keep changing?"