This is a short post that might hopefully stop the flood of emails that I’ve been getting for the last 24 hours:
Google’s Page Rank seems to be updating.
Thanks to the 47 people who have emailed, Twittered and IM’d me to let me know.
While these updates can be a little exciting for some I’d encourage us all to….
Video created in September 2007
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from this new and dynamic medium from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips.
Back in 2002 I stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’. I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Since then I've become a full time blogger and have blogged on over 20 blogs and co-founded the b5media blog network.
You can connect with me via social media sites at Facebook - LinkedIn - Twitter - SU - Plurk - FriendFeed - Digg
68 Responses to “Google Page Rank Updating…. But….”
jhay
April 30th, 2008 12:01 pm
Perhaps the reason for this delayed update in PR by Google is that they’re already using ‘another tool’ in secrecy and soon enough it will be unveiled.
Nonetheless, your advice is excellent. I’ve seen sites that had their PR penalized by Google but still rank well in search engine results and continue to have good amounts of traffic and community activity.
Kelvin Kao
April 30th, 2008 12:09 pm
You should have set your camera, and read through the same words again. See if people catch it. ;-)
Kishor
April 30th, 2008 12:19 pm
You are right. I am already observing some change in the way my blogs get ranked.
Neil Duckett
April 30th, 2008 12:40 pm
I don’t get the big attraction to PR …. mine was at 3, now at 0 …. traffic and earnings all be them minimal have never really been better.
Returning some great organic traffic, continually growing and expanding.
Creating interesting content and chosing targeted post headings has been the key.
Solo Business Marketing
April 30th, 2008 12:42 pm
Firefox is my browser, so I’ve forgotten that pagerank exists.
Why is this number so prestigious? I’m not against it; just wondering.
Greg
April 30th, 2008 12:49 pm
Sure is… finally! My blog went from a PR0 to a PR2 in the last 24 hours.
Frugal Dad
April 30th, 2008 12:52 pm
Thanks for the advice, Darren. As a new blogger I frequently heard people discussing PR in the forums and other spots and I felt really inadequate as a new PR0 site. I thought this was the only measuring stick out there (or the best one) at the time and now realize it is one of many. I agree, build an informative, honest site that attracts readership and content worthy of linking and PR will come.
Michael | University Scholar
April 30th, 2008 1:07 pm
The key is to let page rank excite you when it does go up, and to not care if it goes down.
I actually needed this PR update. My blog has been up for a month and a half, and I just hit the point where I was questioning whether or not to continue. Then after watching this video I go and check my page rank and I got a 4/10! It made me realize that all my hard work has paid off! Now I just need to work on actually getting some ad clicks.
Markus
April 30th, 2008 1:32 pm
After my page rank went from a 3 to a 0 I found myself so stressed out about it that I lost track of my original blog goals. After almost a month of stressing, i promised to focus on content and not SEO.
Myo Kyaw Htun
April 30th, 2008 1:44 pm
My site got PR6 !!! I’m happy on that
Otto
April 30th, 2008 1:50 pm
My site went from three to five over the past few days…Someone said, that’s only up 2, I replies, “hey, that’s over 66%”…lol…
Thiago Prado
April 30th, 2008 1:56 pm
your accent is so funny. where r u from?
Otto
April 30th, 2008 2:02 pm
Thiago, Darren is from Australia, Melbourne to be precise, sounds much like me…Great place, come visit one day!
Dimitri Nosarev
April 30th, 2008 2:02 pm
Wow, will I ever learn this gooogly thing? Boy, I hope I do some day…
Adam King Studio
April 30th, 2008 2:11 pm
Thank you Darren for the reminder. Quality BEFORE quantity. The more quality and expertise you put into your site, the more the numbers will come. Over time. Time being the key. Good post sir. Good post.
Roberta
April 30th, 2008 3:07 pm
Good advice :)
Gazanya
April 30th, 2008 4:20 pm
My site has been 4 ;)
it were 3 at before :)
Bash Bosh
April 30th, 2008 4:22 pm
My blog goes from PR3 to PR4… anyway i was expecting this :)
Brendan McNally
April 30th, 2008 4:49 pm
When will we all get over Page Rank, it has to be the most narcissistic excercise online. My PR is bigger than your PR is almost as bad. You are right of course Darren and your patience with this debate is admirable. Now go back to your analytics and testing and get more conversions and more traffic. Then if page rank is so important to you buy some google shares with your new found wealth.
Thaya Kareeson
April 30th, 2008 5:21 pm
I was starting to obsess about page rank, and this was a timely reminder of why I should blog in the first place. Thank you for this advice!
Mike
April 30th, 2008 5:23 pm
Great tips! My page ranks are going up latley. I just focus on the content which is the most important thing.
Colby
April 30th, 2008 5:37 pm
I hadn’t been paying too much attention to PR, but moving from PR1 to PR3 made me take notice. I appreciate the advice because rather than obsessing about Google Page Rank I’m going to continue to work on making a better blog. Besides, there’s a lot I still need to worry about besides PR.
Mert Erkal
April 30th, 2008 5:37 pm
Mine was 0, still 0. But my search engine traffic has increased significantly. How? Because I target certain keywords, I am using Hittail to monitor these.
Check this one http://www.searchforblogging.com/index.php/2007/12/19/how-to-track-your-keywords-with-hittail/
What Sells Online!
April 30th, 2008 5:41 pm
My page rank has not changed though. Cheers, Samantha
Curnunnos
April 30th, 2008 5:44 pm
Google is not the only fruit !
David Airey
April 30th, 2008 5:57 pm
I’d kind of forgotten about Google PR, until viewing your YouTube video. Then I was pleasantly surprised to see my two blogs go from PR5 to PR6 and PR0 to PR5 respectively.
Still, it’s just another stat, and from experience I know how much time stats can eat up.
I hope all’s well with you, Darren.
Home
April 30th, 2008 6:07 pm
Thanks for the info Darren, as my site is relatively new, I don’t have a pagerank yet, but can imagine how it could affect traffic.
How best to build that up seems like it could be yet another addictive “gotta check that” stat.
Definitely, the content must come first and foremost, and with the lack of frequency of pagerank updates, it seems that pagerank would naturally take a back seat to posting great content. But checking the number of visitors and even the curiousity of knowing which countries they’ve come from has been a slight addiction so far..
Guy On Midlife Crisis
April 30th, 2008 6:09 pm
Its easy to see why people get obsessed with page rank, its a lot of fun too. It also reminds me of the stories of the gold rush too.
So to give people advice on just focusing on building readable blogs that engage, inform, entertain and enhance people’s lives, I totally agree with… with a bit of commercial thinking behind it for search engine optimising.
All the best
Php Ajax blog
April 30th, 2008 6:11 pm
My website’s PR went from 0 to 5..it’s been just 4 month of blogging
Chetan
April 30th, 2008 6:26 pm
Am currently on mobile so cant check it, but one of my friend told me that my blog had got PR3 from PR0. Could anyone confirm?
Glen Allsopp
April 30th, 2008 7:15 pm
Video doesn’t seem to be working, get a ‘were sorry, this video is unavailable’ message when I click play
My blog has went up to a PR 5 :)
Barbara Ling (aka Owlbert)
April 30th, 2008 7:41 pm
Morning,
I’m pleased - Ask Owlbert is PR4, Virtual Coach is PR4 and BarbaraLing is now back to PR5.
Life is good. :)
Enjoy,
Barbara
GettyCash
April 30th, 2008 8:03 pm
I’ve got a PR2 :D I am happy with it.
Michael
April 30th, 2008 8:40 pm
Although I know I shouldn’t really pay attention to PageRank I am very happy to say that my PR went from 3 to 4 yesterday, which makes me very happy.
I have been spending my time building a better blog and to be honest with you I almost forget about PageRank, until someone writes about how it is being updated, then I’ll check mine and find out how I did.
Hammad
April 30th, 2008 8:46 pm
well i think darren ur right
people should be focusing on building a better blog rather then worrying about pagerank all the time….
Clement
April 30th, 2008 9:55 pm
This is soo true. I was one of those guys only worrying about seo first and forgot to do all of the stuff that matters. If you’re blog has good content, links (and therefore PR and subscribers) will come automatically. Focus on your copywriting and content FIRST, SEO is second. Humans first, search engines next
Mike
April 30th, 2008 10:30 pm
Wait… so you’re saying there’s not some magic formula that’s going to get me all the traffic in the world and let me put life on cruise control even without producing credible content? Darn.
Jeff Rothe
April 30th, 2008 10:45 pm
When did the update actually take effect by anyone’s best guess? I noticed spikes in my traffic starting on the 28th that I assumed was because of good content, but didn’t really have a good explanation why they were so much higher.
What kind of difference can a just in PR from a 0-3 make? Does it mean you jump forward to the first page in a list of results for a keyword set where you might have previously been on page four?
bluxed
April 30th, 2008 10:54 pm
One of my sites that i created in February/March 2008 went to a PR2 overnight. Brand new domain and only a half of dozen blog posts. I’m kind of suprised by this and think alot of this PR may be retracted across the board later on. Another site of mine jumped from a PR1 to a PR3 but that one is linked in dmoz and wired.com
Brad
April 30th, 2008 11:08 pm
yeah it is definitely updating and I wish there was a video camera on in front of me to catch my expression when I saw on a single reload of the page it going from pr 0 to pr 4. 9:00 am seems a bit early to start drinking, but there will be a celebritory one soon enough
Syed Balkhi
April 30th, 2008 11:11 pm
Actually Darren, when I first saw it I wanted to blog about it instantly, but then I stopped and said maybe i should wait for people like Darren, or Jeremy to confirm, but neither of you did, so I said maybe I should take the lead in this one.
http://www.balkhis.com/webmaster-world/balkhis-going-green-google-pagerank-update/
I posted that …. My Blog which is very new got Pr 3 ofcourse it was 0 before because it is very new.
And I do agree about forgetting the pagerank and focus on the quality of the site. I even mentioned that in my post that I am not a big fan of Pagerank. I guess I was ahead of most of the other bloggers :) (Makes me feel good)
Keith
April 30th, 2008 11:17 pm
I didn’t know what rank I was until I saw this post and looked it up. Apparently I’m PR5.
Rob O.
April 30th, 2008 11:38 pm
Excellent point, Darren. Sometimes the simplest, most logic solutions are the ones that people overlook the quickest.
Ditto goes for those bogus Alexa scores. Ditto Digg.
All the social networking work and link-swapping in the world won’t make a difference if your blog’s content & design have no long-term appeal to readers.
Nico
May 1st, 2008 3:15 am
I would be glad if the current assigned pagerank would stay. Went from pr 0 to pr 4 on a blog that I started in january. Can’t be right I think.
Brad
May 1st, 2008 3:27 am
Nico> I have been going through my blogs and found that while the one that is 7 months old only went from 1 to 2 and two of them stayed at pr 0, the one that made the biggest jump was the one that I had done the best job at SEO on. Those two are also the ones that I have been using headspace2 rather than the all in one seo pack plugin for.
I have talked to some others and they too confirm their multiple blogs all went up for doing good SEO marketing and the ones who were only mediocre barely were touched. They also think it might have somethign to do with the amount of adsense you are running. Everyone I talked to who went from 0 or 1 to 4 all were maxed out on it on the home page. people who went up only a single rank weren’t
There is also the possibility that social media like digg and del.icio.us are making an impact too. There is also a possibilitiy the new pr4 is the old pr2.
Laurianna
May 1st, 2008 6:20 am
Nice to meet you Darren. I am not a blogger, but I do run a website and I found this link from the forums. We only have a couple bloggers so far, but I will check to see how they are doing in page rank.
Right now I am working on content, but gotta love writers block!
Thank you for the video, and nice to meet you all!
The Oriole Post
May 1st, 2008 9:37 am
Thanks for the info, Darren. I honestly could care less about page rank, as I am just trying to focus on getting readers and eyes to my blog…
That’s what everyone should be focusing on for sure.
Anthony
- The Oriole Post
Duhh
May 1st, 2008 9:49 am
Aha, w00t, y3s!!!1!!1!
My pagerank went from 0 to 4, maybe I’ll rank higher now.
Maree Harris
May 1st, 2008 12:27 pm
Thanks for this, Darren. I really valued you telling us to just concentrate on building a better blog. That’s what makes sense to me. That’s what I am trying to do - establish myself as an expert on the web. Yet I get caught up with all these other messages, for example, about page rank. For a newbie at all this, it becomes a real trap and very confusing.
Another question - what sort of camera do you use to produce your videos? It is an excellent picture compared to most YouTube videos. Your lips and words are even aligned which is not the case in most. I’ve kept away from vidoes because what I have seen are very poor productions.
Aldo
May 1st, 2008 7:08 pm
9 PR of my whole 15 blogs went down, but doesn’t really matter to since there’s another update to chase on.
Guy On Midlife Crisis
May 1st, 2008 7:58 pm
I’ve just been dropped one point yet my traffic is growing at 200% for the past couple of months. Just goes to show you that it is ambiguous and certainly nothing to focus on too much.
Having said that, if my site was at PR5 I’m sure I would be chuffed too. But then if you can jump from 2 to 5, surely you can go the other way.
Tom At The Home Business Archive
May 2nd, 2008 12:25 am
It´s true that by writing quality content you will get better rankings at the search engines.My page rank has not changed after the last page rank update, it is still PR4.
Will
May 2nd, 2008 2:32 am
I Google PR is being diluted? If so, it will it no longer be considered seriously? Many sites that were 0 or 1 are now 2 and 3. Many of these almost never update, some appear abandoned.
I easily found tow this morning that are weird. On one, there are only 3 posts in the past 3 months and two of them are guest posts. Yet that blog went from PR0 to PR2. I found another while browsing Entrecard that has an average of two to 3 posts a month over the past 6 months and it a PR3, up from PR1.
Does not make sense.
fucc
May 2nd, 2008 4:09 am
my pagerank raises from 2 to 3….not bad if you consider that I was 3, 1 and 0 respectively in the last updates!
Barry Hurd
May 2nd, 2008 4:57 am
My site went from 0 to 3 as an entirely new site (launched April 1st)
I can’t complain about moving up three spots in thirty days, then again I really focused on making sure that I didn’t put all my eggs in one basket. I made sure there was fresh content, good content, a variety of links, and worked on covering various other items. So compared to other bloggers, it was a planned launch.
Shaan
May 3rd, 2008 6:46 pm
One of my blog got PR2 from 0 and my best blog,in the terms of traffic and content for my niche,is still on 0…lolz
Regards
Shaan Haider
FruityOaty
May 4th, 2008 9:39 am
My test blog (I use it only for testing purposes - testing themes and plugins)… which has only 1 fake entry with 1 fake comment)… went from PR1 to PR3. LOL, that’s so funny.
Zacky
May 4th, 2008 10:25 am
HI Darren,
Seem that this round of updates got many talking and same here with me.
Looks like something is just not right because some site with regular content updates stayed with PR0 and some site that nearly 90% abandoned for the last 2 months increase from PR1 to PR3
This just does not make sense.
I hope someone can shed some light in what is actually going on with this crazy page rank thingy.
Cheers Mate!
Zacky
The Blogger Tips
May 4th, 2008 7:55 pm
I believe Google always update the PR every 3 months. How about other opinion?
Ransom Place
May 4th, 2008 9:14 pm
While I appreciate Daren’s advice on building a quality blog and page rank will take care of itself, it’s hard for me not to be frustrated about it. Within a couple of months after starting my blog, I felt good about receiving a 3 ranking. Now six months old and featuring quality work, my blog, as of last week, is now ranked 2. So much for trying to build a quality blog!!!!
Suggestions would be appreciated
ransomplace@gmail.com
markowe
May 5th, 2008 8:57 pm
Zzzzzzz…… Follow the man’s advice, give it a rest and concentrate on working hard on your content. I personally find the subject of Pagerank truly truly dull…
Planet Berry
May 6th, 2008 12:12 am
If you increase your content and stay on topic (your blog or site theme) your visitor rate and PR will improve.
Richard Hazell
June 7th, 2008 2:23 am
I’ve written tons of content on my site about drilling holes in very hard tiles like porcelain with diamond drills or holesaws.
My topic is a bit narrow and there is only so many pages I can add content too. But I was trying to raise my PR from 3 to 4. Should I just have a lot of words on the page about drilling tiles. Or should I import a blog from somewhere?
At the moment I use HTML pages which are static. And I have about 200 pages devoted to tile drilling.
I get a lot of traffic and its content relevent but I just dont think I need continuous updates on drilling tiles !
Jose
August 2nd, 2008 5:14 am
I noticed last week that page rank increased across the board. Is G lifting the lower end?
Peter Szabo
August 23rd, 2008 2:42 am
Thanks for the info, Darren. I honestly could care less about page rank, as I am just trying to focus on getting readers and eyes to my blog…
Alex Griffin
August 27th, 2008 4:29 pm
Well i think darren ur right. People should be focusing on building a better blog rather then worrying about pagerank all the time….
fan
October 6th, 2008 1:39 am
it is too bad
my website pr drop from 2 to 0
anyone can give me an answer??
Karl Kiss
October 8th, 2008 5:27 pm
Thanks for the info, Darren. I honestly could care less about page rank, as I am just trying to focus on getting readers and eyes to my blog…
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