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Google PageRank Frequently Asked Questions

Posted By Darren Rowse 3rd of October 2006 Search Engine Optimization 0 Comments

Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) has a useful post on Google PageRank which answers some of the frequently asked questions about PR and PR updates which comes on the heals of the latest PR update.

Here are a few key comments to the questions I get asked a lot:

“PageRank is computed continuously; there are machines that take inputs to the PageRank algorithm at Google and compute the resulting PageRanks. So at any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm. From time-to-time, that internal PageRank value is exported so that it’s visible to Google Toolbar users.”

So – when you see your PR go up or down keep in mind that the new PR that you see is the PR that Google has been using for your site for some time already.

“By the time you see newer PageRanks in the toolbar, those values have already been incorporated in how we score/rank our search results. So while you may be happy to see that the Google Toolbar shows a little more PageRank for a given page, it’s not as if that causes a change in search results at that point. So you won’t see any search engine result page (SERP) changes as a result of this PageRank export–those changes have been gradually baking in since the last PageRank export.”

As above – Google’s been using your PR previously and so when you see a new one you shouldn’t expect any corresponding change in actual search engine rankings or traffic from Google.

This is all information we’ve talked about previously here at ProBlogger but it is worth saying again as the questions continue to get asked on these issues. It’s nice to see Matt talking about it also and confirming that there actually was a PR update (the first time I’ve seen anyone from Google confirm it as it’s happening).

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Where do you go to find a page rank for a site?

  2. install the google toolbar, that wil do the trick as there is a PR search included.

  3. Katiebird, you may find it from Darren’s privious post:
    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-pagerank/

    or go direct to the SEOchat site:
    http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/future-pagerank/

  4. Oh, cool (I haven’t loaded the Google toolbar, so the link is great).

    I’ve got 9 5s and 8 4s. Now onto learning what that means!

  5. Is it out of the question to ask you to put a “printer friendly format” button in your blog (that actually leads to a printer friendly page)?

  6. With paragraph 2 in your quotes…it’s funny I have always believed that, but last week I had a site that jumped in PR and in Google traffic at the same time…like the same hour or two!…so go figure.

  7. I was suprised by this as i thought page rank was not as important as it was a couple of years ago but i must be a bit out of touch

  8. Darren I have a question that you might be able to help me with.

    I know that Google has recently revised its Page Rank. My previous rank according to my Google toolbar was 3. After going to numerous Page Rank checker sites they say that my page rank is now 4. However my toolbar still shows my Page rank as being 3. Is there any reason for the difference ?

    Thanks for your help.

  9. About three weeks ago I discovered that my website PR went from 0 to 3. Now when I checked it, it went back to 0. I have only been improving my website so why the decrease?
    Thank you.

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