On September 28th, Google updated the PageRank displayed in its navigation bar. Many websites have seen theirs go up, or down…
We have already mentioned before that the PageRank shown in the bar is part of a logarithmic scale of 10. That is, it is easy to go from 0 to 1 or from 2 to 3, but it is very difficult to go from 5 to 6, and even more difficult to go from 6 to 7. On the other hand, the PageRank used by Google for its calculations is much more precise and uses a much larger scale, although we do not know by how much. Google is completely secretive in this regard.
That is, the PageRank of the Google toolbar does not show the PageRank calculated in real time (which is the one used by Google in the calculation of its ranking algorithm) but rather it shows the last update. During 2006 there were 4 PR updates: in February, in April, in July and this last one, at the end of September. That is, on 4 occasions during 2006 Google has taken its PageRank, distributed it in base 10 and exported it to the servers that feed the Google toolbars.
This means that in principle, even if someone sees a PageRank change in their Google Toolbar, their results on Google should not be affected, since Google has already been using their updated PageRank for some time. So, whether it has increased or decreased, the results for October, as far as PageRank is concerned, will be the same as the page had in September.
We know that the pages that have been online in the last 3 months do not have a new PageRank. Our website is an example of this: it has been online since August 29th and has not yet assigned a PageRank in the navigation bar. Our same case can be found in many of the forums that deal with PageRank issues. Hopefully, in the next update it will be assigned to us.
The next export is planned for early January. We'll see what happens next…
Links of interest:
Information on what PageRank is and what it is used for:
What is PageRank
Free online SEO course:
Search Engine Optimization Course
Matt Cutts' blog with some questions and answers about this latest update:
Google PageRank Update
