10 replies to this topic

[reddevil]

Hi,
Thanks to the help of members on this site, Google has spidered all my pages and has given PR3 to my home page and all others that are linked rom my home page - I am very happy.
But, my question is, is this just a temporary rating?? I ask because my homepage was given PR2 immediately by G but then dropped to PR0 after a couple of months - I understood that this was just a temporary rating.
Does anybody have any comments?

[DennisG]

The Google PR is something that is certainly not a constant. The PR Google gives to a website depends (for a great deal) on which sites link to your site and since this varies, so does the PR value. So, don't worry too much when your PR drops a point since often it will gain it back within a few days or weeks. If your PR keeps on dropping then you should look into your incomings links to see if there is a problem.

[reddevil]

Thanks DennisG,
Yup, I understand that the Google PR is not a constant but I did not realise that the PR2 rating that I was given when my site was first uploaded, was only a temporary rating. Last week, only my homepage was indexed with a PR0, now this week all my other pages are indexed and everything has PR3. I just wondered if these other pages will slip back to PR0 because it is only a temporary rating for new pages??

[DennisG]

A new page will have a ranking of 0 simply because there are no other pages that are linking to it yet other than maybe your own. Did you create new pages or did you update existing pages? It would seem to me that your site is being indexed well and the PR3 rating is a result of other pages linking to you and thus it would not be a temporary thing.

[SearchRank]

PR usually can change up or down on a month to month basis or whenever Google updates PR and backlink statistical data accessible through the tool bar. The basic assumption would be that as your site continues to gain more and more external links, that the PR would rise. If you lose external links after you have gained them, then it may drop.

With that said, keep in mind that since the last update which occurred around April 9th, the Google toolbar has been fluctuating back and forth from pre April 9th data to post April 9th data. It most likely has something to do with them not updating this information at all their data centers or all computers at any given data center or something like that.

[OldWelshGuy]

A new page will have a ranking of 0 simply because there are no other pages that are linking to it yet other than maybe your own

Dennis that is not quite right, and the answer to your question red is MAYBE I will explain.

Firstly you have to understand that 'page rank' and toolbar page rank are not the same, the tool bar guesses page rank, which is why you have to be wary of using it).

If you put up a new site it does not exist so can have no page rank. When google finds your site, it guesses a page rank. This is displayed but does not count as it has not been confirmed. Page rank can not be confirmed on any page until every page in the google index has been calculated.

Your current rating might be a combination of actual and guessed Page rank (I know it is complicated) I will explain.

When you add a page to a site that Google has a bit of knowledge about (like this forum) Google Toolbar instantly guesses and assigns PR to the page, even though it does not even know the page exists. If you doubt this, then next time you create a new topic you will notice that it has a toolbar PR of about2 , Google could not possibly instantly know about that page, it is the toolbar that has guessed it.

So in a nutshell, when the next round of back link updates is finished, then after that time you can be sure that what you are looking at is your 'real' page rank, according to the totally unreliable toolbar

[reddevil]

OWG,
I think you should write a book about webbuilding!

From your reply, should I assume that during the last update my homepage was 'truly' recognized as a PR3 page (it has about 30 links although not all shown by G), and that all my other newly indexed pages (of which none have links, other than links from my own site) have therefore 'assumed' a PR3 rating, and that this rating will be re-assessed by G sometime soon? If this is correct, then most of these pages will slip in rating, maybe to PR0, because they do not have external links.
Am I right??

[DennisG]

Really? Thanks for elaborating on this OWG. I based my info on my own experience. Whenever I put a completely new page online it always has a PR of 0 hence I presumed this would always be the case. But what you said sounds logical especially now that I've looked at the PR for this page (already 3) and the PR for the "Add Reply" page which is also 3 already.

[bkernst]

One thing that has been left out is that as Google loops through recaclulating the PR for every page, it will influence other PRs calculated later, and it will be influenced by previously related PRs, since this cannot be done at exactly the same time. When you have two pages, one PR has to be calculated before the other.
Because of this, the PR is continously fluctuating, even when it seems to be stable for a while. It most likely has some small decimal figures which the public never gets to see which I assume would change constantly per page.
As the bigger looping continous, the PRs are updated again. Since pages are added, removed and updated there is always a change somewhere.

Bernhard

[OldWelshGuy]

OWG,
I think you should write a book about webbuilding!

I cant spell, cant compose, my grammar is lousy, it would go straight into the bargain bin

It is hard to say which pages are actual and which are guessed. Internal links count as links, so I would not expect the new pages to have a pr0, if you have a one click navigation system, then they might well all end up with the same Page Rank.

OWG

[OldWelshGuy]

Bernard, that is exactly right, Page rank is a domino thing, when one falls (or increases) it impacts on pages across the web. This is why when a big link farm is taken down, it can impact other pages without them ralising. Google is now in constant flux, with a pause for Backlink(PR) confirmation every now and again.