Lately I have observed that there is lot of anxiety building up in the Internet showground regarding the Google Page Ranks not being updated according to the earlier patterns. Finally, I decided to do a research and get this cleared up.
Two major facts worrying the webmasters are:
- The Page rank display has been taken off the Google toolbar.
- No page rank update as expected and its taking longer time.
- Page rank patent grapevine spreading.
Let’s start with what Google rep had to say on the Google forums
Why Google page rank is not updating?
We do Toolbar PageRank updates 3-4x/year but to be honest, it’s not something that you need to wait for. The PageRank shown in the Toolbar is an older snapshot of the PageRank that we use internally (which is continuously updated). Changes in Toolbar PageRank will not change anything with your site’s crawling, indexing, or ranking, so as a webmaster, I’d strongly recommend focusing on something else.
If you are using PageRank as a means to sell PageRank-passing links, keep in mind that this is against our Webmaster Guidelines, and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.
Guidelines links:
- Paid links – Webmaster Tools Help – Google
- Report spam, paid links, malware, and other problems to Google
- Webmaster Guidelines – Webmaster Tools Help – Google
Is Google PageRank DEAD?
PageRank is not dead — and PageRank is not everything. We have well over 200 factors in our algorithms, so while PageRank is involved, it’s by far not the only thing. As I mentioned above, we continuously update our internal PageRank, and for the time being we’ll continue to update the Toolbar PageRank occasionally.
Since I answered your questions 🙂 — can you tell me why you’re so interested in the PageRank number shown in the Toolbar? Why do you worry about it enough to post here?
So, What really going on:
- PageRank building has become a big business and Google simply does not seem to like it.
- Webmasters have spend big bucks to optimize there websites and look forward to improved Google PR to further capitalize or SELL it for more money – that’s the major cause of worry on the Internet.
- Since Google PR is one of the ingredients to the Google search engine position – it would continue to discourage forced search engine optimization as it loves genuine results only.
- Google PR is not dead! As the rep says – its very much alive. The PR would be less frequently updated and would be internally used.
To learn more about the above responses, you could read the Google’s response in their support forum here:
And regarding the Google PageRank patent issue, for more details – you could find the content in the 15th page of the document Form 10-k (2009) filed with United States Securities and Exchange Commission here
Take home: As per the trends that the Google PR showed all these years, A Google PR update is expected in January 2011. But seeing all the action going around, I personally feel, it could take some time for such and update. It’s clear that Google does not love the idea of paid links. If you really like it or not, it would be a good idea to concentrate on developing great websites and unique content. The Google PR is not going to affect the way your website is being crawled or indexed.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: (First Google PR update of the year updated on January 20, 2011)
Now i have enough confirmation from thousands of webmasters and forums that it has finally arrived here. I would say the Pagerank was updating data center by data center and now majority of the webmasters confirm that the page rank update for the year 2011 has arrived on January 20, 2011. Thanks for your valuable participation in discussions we had.
An update is "expected" in Jan '11… unfortunately, webmasters can "expect" all they want to, it's not going to make Google do anything. When it doesn't happen in January, people will "expect" it in February.
Apparently PR does affect crawling and indexing. It's one of the ranking factors and supposedly (could be another rumor). Higher PR sites get crawled more often.
Yep you are correct. the expected date keeps moving on.But i guess we should be concentrating less on the PRs and continue building great content except for when you are in the SEO business.
cheers
Josh
Some additional interesting info direct from google regarding PageRank and the 'upcoming' update… can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/…
Hey Daniel,
Thanks for sharing! This was very helpful.
Just quoting what google said here: "we have been updating the Toolbar PageRank (also since April), though it's possible that you don't see it for every URL/site.
Obviously seeing so many reports is a bit odd — I've passed your feedback on to the team here to review. At this time, we are not planning on removing the Toolbar PageRank. It's an important signal for us (but again, it's one out of hundreds of signals), so I think it's good to expose some of that to users. As a webmaster, I think it's an interesting metric, but overall it really shouldn't be a goal"
So basically they are trying to burn the paid link business and not killing PR. there could be updates that are internal and external – but no news yet on when the external one is.
cheers
Josh
Great Information Josh!
Thanks for providing so much clarity on the user requests. Really appreciate
Cheers
CVA
You are always welcome friend!
cheers
Josh
Thanks alot for the information.
I dont belive either that G-PR is the most usefull measurement of a site, but im always curious what happens every "update".
Thanks again and keep up the good work!
Yes, you are absolutely right!
regards
Josh
Obviously PR isn;t dead… this article was written 8 days ago & it already has a pr of 0. If pr was dead it would be grey or n/a… Google might be updating right now?
Hey Capt,
You are right! But what is referred here is basically not the death of the concept of google PR, it cannot be dead since its one major factor governing the SERPs as well. But we are trying to understand google's approach towards it has been changing to keep it more internal and less frequent updating to discourage the paid forced optimization.
cheers
Josh
Thank you for this post, so I should not be concerned that my pagerank hasn't updated in over a year? I promote my site heavily, and it's still PR3.
Interesting article about Google PageRank, thanks!
I like Page Rank. I myself had a few PR2 and PR3 websites but I totally agree with Google in this decision. It’s time for advertisers to look at more accurate metrics like Google Analytics’ stats like visit, conversion rate or return of investment. What do you think about the change? Will you be worried if Google really stopped showing PageRank?
Not really! I would be worried if my website stops receiving visitors! and for me metrics and good content really matters!
Cheers, Joshu
Google developed an algorithm that was based on looking at how many people linked to your site and what those links said. So lots of links from lots of websites increased your website’s ranking in Google. The term used to describe the popularity or your website was known as PageRank.