Jan. 05 PageRank Update Sees Yahoo, MS, Others Drop To PR9

[bobmutch]

Looks like there is a BL (backlink) & TBPR (toolbar PageRank meter) update happening.

You can check this on SEOChats Future PageRank Tool
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/future-pagerank/

There currently are showing changes on the following datacenters
66.102.11.99
66.102.11.104
66.102.9.104
66.102.9.99
216.239.59.99
216.239.59.104
216.239.39.99
216.239.39.104
This also should be working on McDar's Datecenter Quick Check tool but appears to be only showing the BL updates at this point. Select "Check for BL/PR Update".
http://www.mcdar.net/q-check/datatool.asp

They have a Google Dance Tool over at WebMasters Community also that you can use. You have to be registered to get access to the tool.
http://wm-community.com/dev/dancing.php

Update History for those that are interested:

Jan 1/2005 TBPR & BL Update 87 days
Dec 16/2004 BL Update
Nov 25/2004 BL Update
Oct 28/2004 GDPR Update?
Oct 28/2004 BL Update
Oct 17/2004 GDPR Update
Oct 16/2004 BL Update
Oct 06/2004 TBPR & BL Update 106 days
Sep 10/2004 BL Update
Aug 30/2004 BL Update
Aug 10/2004 GDPR Update
Aug 09/2004 BL Update
July 16/2004 BL Update
Jun 22/2004 TBPR & BL Update 22 days
May 31/2004 TBPR & BL Update 38 days
Apr 23/2004 TBPR & BL Update 16 days
Apr 07/2004 TBPR & BL Update 22 days
Mar 16/2004 TBPR, GDPR & BL Update 50 days
Feb 11/2004 Brandy: Algo Update
Jan 26/2004 TBPR Y BL UPdate 15 days
Jan 11/2004 Austin: TBPR & BL Update 19 days
Dec 23/2003 TBPR & BL Uupdate 15 days

Further infomation and forum support for these dates can be found on my list at http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.html

[reggy73]

where do u see that happening?

[reggy73]

OK - i've just seen that

it looks like a site i just started in December is showing a future PR of 3 :)

[bobmutch]

Yahoo Home back to PR10; MS drops both PR10s to PR9

Well I expected Yahoo to go back up to a PR10 but I didn't expect to see MS drop off on there 2 other remaining PR10 pages. I guess the big shocker is Google dropping 36 pages!

Anywhere here are the numbers. Enjoy!

Jan 1/2005 TBPR Update:
53 out of 148 pages dropped from a PR10 to PR9 or PR8. That is 35%.

Oct 5/2004 TBPR Update:
37 out of 165 (13 redirects I didn't have on my list) droppped from a PR10 to a PR9. Thats 22%.

Yahoo back up to PR10
The following sites that dropped from a PR10 to a PR9 on the Oct 6th TBPR update are back to a PR10.
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/
http://www.yahoo.com/


Microsoft: As of the June 22/2004 update MS had 5 PR10 pages. On Oct 5th TBPR update they lost 4 of those pages and picked up one new PR10 page for a total of 2 PR10 pages. They just lost both of those PR10 pages down to a PR9 so then now have 0 PR10 pages.

2 Microsoft Home Page Drops to PR9
http://www.microsoft.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx

2 Adobe: Oct 6th TBPR update Adobe dropped 4/51 PR page pages and picked up 2 new pages for a total of 49 to go into this Jan 1/2005 TBPR update. They are now down to 49 PR10 pages.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/distribute.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/main.html

36 Google:
Lost 36 out of 43 PR10s.
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3560

3 NSF:
http://www.nsf.gov/home/menus/news.htm
http://www.nsf.gov/home/menus/publications.htm
http://www.nsf.gov/home/search.htm

2 w3:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231

5 Redirects:
http://www.adobe.com/misc/training.html
http://store.apple.com/
http://www.bubel.com/
http://www.dejanews.com/
http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayerbutton

3 Misc:
http://www.ercim.org/
http://www.nasa.gov/home/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

[martinuboo]

Great information, bobmutch!

Thanks. I have recently returned to the SEO field and I don't have very much experience with these "updates". How long do these changes take to propogate to all the data centers? How long does it take for these BL updates to effect the SERPs?

I have gained some PR and many listed BLs in this update and I am interested in seeing the impact on the SERPs. :confused:

Thanks again.

[bobmutch]

martinuboo: Any time there is a Real PR update or a BL update it should affect you SERP if you have new inbound links. It will also effect you if you don't have new inbound links as others will.

It has been also most 24hrs sites the updates started so it will be another day I would think at the most.

PR has been devalued quite a bit as far as Ranking weight goes.

[bobmutch]

I counted and recounted. I can't believe it. Google had 43 - PR10 pages going into this toolbar PR update. 36 of them dropped to PR9 or, can you believe PR8!!

Here they are.

http://froogle.google.com/
http://www.google-store.com/
http://www.google-store.com/privacy.php
http://www.googlestore.com/
http://catalogs.google.com/
http://groups.google.com/
http://images.google.com/
http://labs.google.com/
http://local.google.com/
http://news.google.com/
http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/en
http://services.google.com/appliance/request_info/site
http://toolbar.google.com/
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
http://www.google.com/appliance/
http://www.google.com/appliance/customers.html
http://www.google.com/apis/
http://www.google.com/contact/index.html
http://www.google.com/help/index.html
http://www.google.com/help/features.html
http://www.google.com/jobs/
http://www.google.com/jobs/balance.html
http://www.google.com/jobs/benefits.html
http://www.google.com/jobs/culture.html
http://www.google.com/jobs/inside.html
http://www.google.com/jobs/positions.html
http://www.google.com/jobs/reasons.html
http://www.google.com/options/wireless.html
http://www.google.com/plex/index.html
http://www.google.com/privacy.html
http://www.google.com/press/index.html
http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
http://www.google.com/wireless/
http://www.googlestore.com/privacy.asp

You can verify this with my Oct 6th PR10 page.
http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/pr-10-pages.php
And my June 22 PR10 page.
http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/pr-10-pages-june2004.php

[strategicrankings]

yeah Bob , seen that. However good news for me, most of my clients website have had raise in PR. Some from 0 to PR=5. Really good news for them for the new year.
:D

[jackson992]

Another crappy update. Thank God it doesn't affect rankings

[bobmutch]

strategicrankings: Ya it just like life. Some are going up and some are going down : )
All my sites when higher. My business site when to a PR6 and its only been up 4 months. Its in DMOZ also. I was hoping for a PR7 but hey I guess I need to add it to a bunch more directories.

[I, Brian]

Another crappy update. Thank God it doesn't affect rankings
Absolutely. :)

Rankings and income are much more important than a little green line. :D

[Marcia]

Thanks. I have recently returned to the SEO field and I don't have very much experience with these "updates". How long do these changes take to propogate to all the data centers? How long does it take for these BL updates to effect the SERPs?
If you've been gone for a while you need to know that the Google updates as they used to be are gone - totally a thing of the past. These so-called updates really aren't, they actually mean nothing - they've got nothing to do with the internal data - there are "rolling updates" continuously and therefore continuous ranking shifts.

All they mean is that Google is every so often letting the public see a very, very limited amount of information that really has no worth beyond curiosity, since it's got no bearing on changed SERPs. Those take place transparently on a continuous basis.

The only "event" worth noting is when there's an intense algo change, and even those aren't always easy to spot unless many sites get hit hard, which hasn't happened for a while. But they've got nothing to do with the little green graph on the toolbar, which many have uninstalled because they gain far more from spending their time creating content for their sites than watching the little green bar.

[jackson992]

Last major algo change was around the 15th or so of December

[bobmutch]

Marcia: "These so-called updates really aren't, they actually mean nothing - they've got nothing to do with the internal data - there are "rolling updates" continuously and therefore continuous ranking shifts."
I hold that this last toolbar PR update as a Real PR update a BL update and a toolbar update. In the past (up until jun22/2004) there has been a TBPR and BL update every month. The difference now, as I see it, is that when a BL and Real PR update is done there is no toolbar update. It would seem like there is now going to be a toolbar PR udpate every 3 months or so. Other than that we are still having BL and real PR updates every 30 day or so.

What is this rolling update that you speak of? Are you saying that the real PR is being updated real time?

martinuboo: If you have been out of touch for a while I think the big change is that the Toolbar PR update is gone from monthly to quartely and the Ranking weight that PR once had has been devalued quite abit. For Google inbound links holds high Ranking and on-page factors besides title don't hold much weight with Google. Yahoo sill gives alot of Ranking weight for on-page factors.

There is lots of good information here on the SEW fourm and in the SEW blog. Search around and enjoy.

[Marcia]

What is this rolling update that you speak of? Are you saying that the real PR is being updated real time?
Whether or not PR is updated in real time is completely irrelevant; it may or not be, and it matters little. Yep! Sites are updated with regard to rankings on a *constant* basis irrespective of the quarterly, so-called, "PR updates" which may or may not have bearing.

If PR were the only element factored into scoring it would b one thing - so let's not get interest peaked out of proportion. Real PR is only one component out of over 100 factors that are used for scoring and ranking sites, so it behooves us to maintain perspective on its potentiality for weighting and its role in determining rankings.

What Google does now, and how current updates and scoring occur, have little to nothing to do with how they used to be done.

[MHS]

Looking at the TBPR updates for the last year now, it seems like this TBPR update has had a bigger FLUX then others. Looking at one of my site the PR is there and isen't, it's added to some pages then its gone. The same thing is going on with my results on google, I am in Supplemental Land and then I'm out.. and now I'm back in with 439 resluts in the Supplemental World.

Ryan K

[Marcia]

Pages in the supplemental index are a different matter altogether. No way to tell without knowing what kind of site it is, and how much is unique outside of the global navigation itself, IMHO.

IMHO ranking changes have little to do with the fact that "so-called" TBPR has changed, which could likely be smokescreen at best, but rather that other elements for ranking have increased or decreased in weighting.

BTW, while we're at it, it wouldn't hurt to look at the things that have influenced rises or falls in the Yahoo index as well as Google. Some people may possibly think that there may be common elements involved that have been devalued in counting toward scoring.

[Marcia]

Being that there are over 100 factors involved in Google's algo for scoring of web pages, if anyone thinks, at this point in time, that PR outweighs all the others, even to the point of ignoring sheer number of IBLs and anchor text of IBLs, well then - they are smoking socks.

[bobmutch]

Marcia: There have been a 100 factors that have weight in Rankings for years. That is nothing new. Rankings change day to day and have been for years so that is nothing new. What has changes is PR doesn't have the weight it used to and the period of toolbar PR updates has gone from monthly to quartely.

[Dave Hawley]

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to know when real PR changes. I'm sure we are all aware that Toolbar PR means nothing other the the green bar gets shorter or longer. Bit like watching paint dry if you ask me :)

[MattKP]

A few of my sites PR went up, then it went down, then it up , now its reverted back to the old PRs... anybody see this? Do you think they will be updated again?

-- ok 5mins later, its back. I guess it will take a little while ;)

[dannysullivan]

Bob, two questions on the data you're working from.

First, you have a list (http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/pr-10-pages.php) you've mentioned above of all pages/URLs on the web that are ranked PR 10 by Google. How do you know this? Unless you are visiting every page on the web, I don't see how you or anyone can have a conclusive list like this. But perhaps I'm missing something the Google API or hacking the Google PageRank checksum is providing.

Second, you've also mentioned another page (http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-10-sites.php) that lists entire domains considered to be PR 10. Google, to my knowledge, is still working on a URL-by-URL basis. In other words, it isn't giving an entire "domain" a PR score. They might, of course, be doing this behind the scenes and not admitting to it. But I'm assuming that this domain list you have really is a list of the home page PR scores for each domain. In other words, the PR score for the "adobe.com" domain is really the PR score for the home page/default page put out by the adobe.com server, correct?

[bobmutch]

dannysullivan: I note every site but it is possible that I have missed some. As on Oct 5th Toolbar PR update I found 13 additional PR10 redirected pages than I was not aware of.

I think that the list I have is very close to all PR10 Pages. I keep in contact with 3 or 4 other sites that are doing the same thing and I also have a taken very close looks at sites like Google, MS, Abode and Apple. So perhaps I should revise that statement to reflect what it is.

My PR10 sites page is a list of sites that have 1 or more PR10 pages. If they have more I just list the home page. I concur Google is still working on a page by page basics for assigning real PR, toolbar PR and Google Directory PR. The PR10 sites list has a link to the PR10 that merits the site being in that list.

I have spend may hours working on these lists and have visits literally 100's of pages on Adobe, Google, Apple etc. As it would be impossible to list all PR9 or PR8 sites I have picked PR10 pages. This way I can get some kind of an idea whats on each Toolbar PR update. For example a number of Googles pages dropped from a PR10 to a PR8 this update. I have not found that to have happened before.

[bobmutch]

MattKP: Yes it depends on what datacenter you are accessing. I had this happen to me 2 days after the PR update started and I thought for a couple mins that Google had done a roll back : )

[bobmutch]

Dave Hawley: "As far as I'm aware, there is no way to know when real PR changes."In the past when there was a BL update there was a real PR update and a TB PR update at the same time. My PageRank Update History list shows this.

Now that Google has (seems like it) gone to a ~quartely update of Toolbar PR there is no reason to think they have stopped doing Real PR updates the way they used to do. That is when ever there is a BL update.

In this all Jan 1/2005 TB PR update there was a BL update also and I hold that there also was a Real PR update.

[Dave Hawley]

In the past when there was a BL update there was a real PR update and a TB PR update at the same timeI must be missing something here, how would anyone (outside Google) know when there is a real PR update?

[Marcia]

I must be missing something here, how would anyone (outside Google) know when there is a real PR update?
No one outside the Plex can know, and no one does now. The occasional toolbar updates reflect nothing more than a little piece of info publicly that's incomplete and only partial, as are the backlinks being shown - or rather, not shown. Endless speculation on why is fruitless, it simply is what it is and we do what needs be done without what used to be available.

But back in those days of monthly updates it was different, it all happened at once. The new backlinks would start to roll out across the different data centers and migrate to www2. and www3.google.com and the TBPR was then updated that you could see accurately reflected the added backlinks. And the rankings changed very visibly at the same time.

Thare are absolutely no grounds for bickering over it or having to defend the fact that updates happened as they did or how often they did. No grounds for contention over it at all. Whoever was around at the time remembers it quite clearly.

The monthly updates were an established fact that everyone knew about for a couple of years and feedback was even asked for on what webmasters thought of the new index. Things changed, and things are totally different now. To reiterate, updates are fairly continuous and the toolbar is a smidgen that's "updated" occasionally that does not reflect what the update process actually is.

[Dave Hawley]

No one outside the Plex can know, and no one does nowThat's what I thought.