Finding The True PR Of A Page?

I had an email "conversation" this last week which I feel others may benefit from "listening in" on. Here it is in summary:

"Andy

Why is it that xxxxxxx ranks so well on Google for the phrase xxxxxx xxxxxx when it has a PR of 0. The other top results have PRs of 5 and 6. Is Page Rank becoming less important?

Graham"

My answer to Graham was to go back and read a previous newsletter where I discussed just this. In issue 48 I discussed anomalies in PR and backlinks. You can read it online here:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/issue48

In reply, Graham wrote back:

"Andy

If Google are not telling us the real PR values, how can we find out the PR of a site? This is making link exchanges much more difficult. How are we supposed to know whether a link partner is good if we don't know their true PR?

Graham"

and my reply went something like this:

"Graham,

Google released backlinks and Page Rank data to the webmaster community. However, in doing so, they unleashed a monster.

SEOs quickly reverse-engineered the Google algorithm which showed how important both backlinks and PR really were to high rankings.

Every SEO and his cat went out to increase backlinks, and increase PR to their sites. Knowing the Page Rank of another site was fundamental in "manipulating" the PR of your own site. Knowing the linking structure of other sites was fundamental in beating the system and getting your link structure just right for top rankings.

SEOs were manipulating the results using information that became available as soon as Google released PR and backlink data.

Why does Google dislike this? Well, Google wants the best pages to rise to the top of the rankings. A best page might be described as the page with the most relevant content for the search query that was run at google.com.

As webmasters became better at manipulating PR and backlinks, more and more rubbish began to surface in the top results, and that remains today. Pages ranking well only because a good SEO did his or her job, not because the page is the most relevant.

This is why Google have removed your privileges and no longer gives accurate PR or backlink data. They don't want you to have it any longer. They have it in their database and use it for ranking purposes, they just don't tell you that information any more.

As to your question about how to find the real PR if Google toolbar does not show it - there is no way. This is information that Google own, and they have no obligation to give it to you. By hiding this information, Google probably hopes that webmasters will give up the obsession of PR and backlinks, and concentrate on providing quality content that searchers will find interesting - content that adds value to the net.

So how do you know if a link partner is a good one? Simple. Look at their website and see if it is quality or rubbish. A quality site will always be a good link partner, a rubbish site will never be a good link partner.

This is how Google always envisaged PR and backlinks working together to pick the best pages for search results. Sites vote for others based on quality of site, not because of what benefits you might get for providing the link."

Page Rank and PageRank - Google Toolbar PR vs Actual PR

I realized that there is quite some confusion when it comes to the Term Page Rank. People often referring to the Term in a way that it is ambiguous. The problem is, that the two meanings of the word are very different from each other.

The best way to avoid confusion is to extend the term Page Rank when you are using it in a conversation or article to indicate what you are referring to when you say "Page Rank". Use the terms "Google PageRank" and "Page Ranking" or "Ranking of a Page" instead.

But what exactly are the two meanings of the term and why is one of the two supposed to be inaccurate or incorrect most of the time, when displayed via a certain very popular browser plug-in or specialized SEO tools?

"Page Rank" (two words),
incorporates ALL Ranking criteria used by a Search Engine Algorithm to calculate the Value a page has for a specific Search Term. All Pages that match a Key Phrase are sorted by the Page Rank Value.

This is part of every Search Engine that displays search results by "relevance" and not just alphabetically.

"PageRank(tm)" (PR) - the Google PageRank,
is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the Web. PageRank is a trademark Term of Google and the algorithm named PageRank is patented by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The famous PageRank algorithm allows the determination of each pages PageRank in relationship to all pages available on the Web (in the Google Index).

The Google PageRank is only one of over 100 criteria for Google to determine the "Page Rank" of a Page for a specific Key Phrase in Google's vast Search Index.

The Google PageRank(tm) value displayed in the Google Toolbar (the value between 0-10) is not the value used by Google Internally. That means that for example a Page where the Toolbar shows "0" as PageRank might has internally a much higher PageRank, between 3 and 4 for example. The reason for the difference is not clear and people can only speculate.

Even if the displayed PageRank Value would be somewhat accurate, so is it still not the exact number/value Google is using in their Algorithm.

The actual calculated number using the original algorithm is a floating point number with a lot of digits after the decimal point. A site with PR 1 could have an actual PR of 1.298245 another one with PR1 might only has an actual PR of 1.00123.

Integer vs Floating Point
The fact that the Toolbar value is rounded to the next whole number is important, because this invisible difference is making a bigger difference the higher the PageRank of a site becomes (a difference of hundreds of thousands of inbound links between 2 pages with the same displayed PR).

Furthermore, the "Google PageRank(tm)" is a number/value assigned by Google to a page/document, independent from the Keyword Phrase. "Page Rank" on the other hand is the number/value assigned to a page in combination with a specific Keyword Phrase.

Conclusions

Fact 1.
"Page Rank" is not the same as "Google PageRank(tm)"

Fact 2.
"Google PageRank(tm)" shown in the Google Toolbar is not the same as the actual "Google PageRank(tm)" number or value used by Google to determine the "Page Rank" of a Page for a specific Key phrase.

Fact 3.
"Google PageRank(tm)" value is for a specific Page or document on the Web and the "Page Rank" value is for a specific Web Page/Document and Keyword Phrase combination.

Google Page Rank Updates

Many webmasters are obsessed with the Google Page Rank. Articles and books have been written about Google PR (Page Rank). Forum postings cover the topic over and over again and about every 3 months tensions are rising when a possible Page Rank update is eventually happening. Page Rank updates are an interesting experience watching a small group of webmasters go a little crazy.

It all starts with somebody noticing the PR update in progress. This event will find its way into forums and newsgroups fast. Within minutes and hours the Internet community becomes aware of a Page Rank update. As Google.com uses several different data centers for its search engine services and also updates them in different intervals webmasters all over the world will see different results when looking for Page Rank results. A Page Rank update will also not complete within an hour or a day. For several days results will fluctuate.

With that in mind it is a funny event watching the hype surrounding a PR update. Webmasters get nervous if the PR of their website suddenly changes. A change can mean that the PR completely disappears or that the webmaster sees different (conflicting) results. As a high Page Rank can mean higher amounts of traffic and eventually higher income from a website this event often feels like a rollercoaster ride for the people who depend on having a successful website. Imagine the website you worked for so hard suddenly going up and down in Page Rank during a PR update. Now the same people start posting questions and comments in forums and newsgroups. The more experienced webmasters know the game and react professionally. They know that the publicly visible Page Rank is just a moment in time to display a snapshot of what is in Google's database. They know that PR actually updates daily or weekly internally, but that these more frequent updates do not show up as publicly visible PR updates. But no matter how often it is pointed out that the publicly visible PR is not important - the hype around this topic by a large group of webmasters does not quiet down. "How many links does it take to get a PR 5?" - "Why does my PR suddenly went down? I added x number of back links to my site." - "I hate Google for doing this." - These and many other comments or questions will show up. But in the end it all comes down to: Public PR is just a snapshot in time of what is in Google.com's database. PR changes much more often than what is showing up in the Google Toolbar.

And so it comes as no surprise that about every 3 months the tensions go high up in newsgroups and online forums when it comes to discussing Google Page Rank. If you are on the hunt for a high Page Rank for you site - don't waste time looking for the publicly visible PR. Use the time the others need to discuss PR to actually work on the Page Rank for your site. Establish high quality back links to your site. Grow these numbers slowly. A large increase in a short amount of time is not natural. Back links grow slowly and that is what Google is looking for. Be smart - be in it for the long run and not some short-term PR gain that won't last.