Ok now I know that most SEO’s know and have been saying this for a long time, but now a Google employee John Mu has posted the following content
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.CheersJohn
BUT. DESPITE the clear instruction above by John, only a few comments down, someone posts
I’ve found that Google typically does a major scan of the web every 28-30 days (once a month) and updates PR every 3-4 months I’m just waiting for the next update so they can pick up my new site.
We have a saying in Wales that goes ” you can’t educate Pork, you can only cure it” 😉 Some people just don’t get it do they?
Hehe, great point made there, PR always makes me wanna get involved in the chat! As you say I agree that toolbar PR is no more (and hasn’t been for quite a long time now) a ranking factor that makes any difference apart from maybe giving an inkling of how Google saw your websites authority a good few months back.
Interestingly John (in quote above) from Google suggests focusing strongly on things other than PageRank yet nicely avoids adding the fact that ‘current’ PR (Google’s internal PR stats) i.e. NOT toolbar pagerank is clearly an indication of trust and authorative possibilities within a website… It’s solely just not available in a toolbar view, unless maybe you work at Google! So without starting another of the millions of PR discussions out there that always follow the same route I guess my point is that all the aspects that make a PR ARE VERY important as was always really known, it’s just that we cant see how the big G rates us TODAY!
Cheers,
Stuart.
The SEO Expert in Chester
I would agree with that. TBPR is a snapshot of PR, a bit like the ghost of Christmas past. Well it is exactly that for some poor bleeders 🙂
🙂
you’ve just said all I said above in a much more refined manner and more to the point, also including some humor and wit too, this will be why I haven’t ever started my own blog etc yet! Darn I need to learn how to just quickly get to the point!
Does anyone here have any experience with Twitter page rank? I would be interested to participate in that discussion (even passively) if anyone is spending time thinking and experimenting with it. I really miss the trips I used to make in Clacton. I am about 8000 miles away from there now. Good luck to you all in 2011!
Agreed. I cannot even fathom, why some choose to believe contrary. I bet none of their actual SERP’s have changed, on the day the toolbar PR gets updated. Though, that said, it’s still nice to see an extra notch on the bar, when the refresh happens 😀
The post should have read “If you are using PageRank as a means to buy PageRank-passing links”