Roughly every 3-4 months we take a snapshot of PageRank values and export them so that the new values are visible in the Google Toolbar. I believe that another set of PageRanks started going out on Friday. New PageRanks are visible at many data centers, but not at every data center. Why not at every data center? Because some data centers are using a slightly older infrastructure for a few query types that are off the beaten path a bit (info:, link:, toolbar PageRank queries, etc.).
New Toolbar PageRanks visible
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But are the toolbar PR values the exact same values as the one Google’s algo uses on a daily basis?
Good morning Matt
Thanks for update.
Keep asking you about new infrastructure weather report. Has it been a data refresh / data push during the weekend?
Thanks.
Do you re-calculate the PR completely before exporting? Is it the “working-copy” of the PR used internally on the date of the export? Any comments on truncated pagerank?
Hello, Matt,
Could you tell us when was the snapshot taken? Some people believe the pagerank values exported are quite old. I would say they are from mid to 20th Sep. Do you have some details on this?
Thanks
I would guess the exported values are still a month or more old, based on the observation of a couple sites I market.
Hi Matt
Out of interest (and apologies if you covered this before but I couldn’t find it if you did), what do you personally consider TPR to be useful for these days from the average webmaster’s perspective?
Cheers
Simsi
Matt, I often wonder, how is the PageRank value stored internally, is it a floating-point number as many people suggest or is it just the integer value itself due to the heavy recursive PR computations?
I’m wondering why the exported PR is at least a month old? When checking the “new” results i came across some “old” links to one of my sites which i removed more than a month ago.
Dear Matt
Is there any “official” way to ask you stuff or recommand one topic i’d like you to write a post about? I always feel bad, when i hijack your blog comments for questions.
Regards
Sebastian
I noticed this update last week. You post answered why the update between data centers are not finished yet. Because of of the infrastructure. I think the new PageRank will not display until all data centers use the same infrastructure.
Dear Matt,
About time.
Best Regards,
-Harry
Hi Matt,
why do ‘u export the snapshot of PageRank values?
Best Regads
Hey Matt Cutts, did you pushed the red button for this PR update?
)
( http://www.ayanev.com/matt-cutts-button-working-334/
What would you say about the discussion in digitalpoint about the dates of this PR update ?
Do you think its almost 2 months old data ?
Matt,
Thanks for the update. Getting confirmation and updates such as this make being a webmaster much easier. I can now take less time fretting about PR updates and focus on building content for my site that will provide value to our users.
This data is at LEAST 3 weeks old, according to my brief glance at it.
> This data is at LEAST 3 weeks old, according to my brief glance at it.
I have a couple of websites that got new links in the last three weeks and none before that – and these are showing increased PR values so I must deduce the data is not that old.
-Nas
How do you know it’s not lagged and the PR you SEE now is not months old? One cannot simply count the new links as a link is not always a link come voting time.
Thanks for the Toolbar Page Rank Update posting. The toolbar algorithm is really appreciable.
Well, I have 3 new websites – one with just one pr7 link, which was visible for 21-23 July, then removed… the website got pr5!
On 28-29 July I started to promote 2 brand new websites – linkbuilding etc (nice pr links for them) – they both are with 0 pr so far
So I think this PR is a screenshot of 21-23 July variables
Hi Matt,
I’m also having some problems in having the PageRank value displayed in the new IE 7 Beta version.
I hope a new release is coming to solve this problem.
Manuel
http://livepr.raketforskning.com/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattcutts.com%2Fblog%2Freminder-check-your-sites%2F
Here is a really superb way of gauging which datacenters are up to snuff – but what is really interesting is the time period that a Web page is required to have existed BEFORE getting ANY pagerank
The topic being analyzed was created:
Over the past two weeks, my toolbar PR has been flipflopping between 4 and 5. I tell someone it is 5, and they tell me it is 4. I check it is 5, but they still insist it is 4. Google’s way of entertaining us
Nah, it’s at least over a month old.. as I have a website I launched last month that has about 1400 links (according to MSN)… but google still show’s 0… and a PR of 0. (although it’s alexa is still below 200,000)
Looks like the link: update is done in a greater monthly cycle than the pagerank one… or at least vastly differing cycles.
Do i need to know that? What does it tell me when i know it? Why would i care? Meaning, what purpose has the Pagerank for the mom and pop site out there?
thanks
viggen
At DP, a lot of discussion is going on about the date of this “visible” PR. People are guess that it is about 2 months old PR. Can you coment on that?
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the info.
I am seeing exactly what you describe above with my site. About 50% of data centers are reporting a jump from PR6 to 7 and 50% are saying I am still a PR6.
Will the data centers using the slightly older infrastructure be updated in due course, or will my PR be split by data center for the next couple of months?
Andrew
Who is getting 10/10? a few random checks say http://www.apple.com wins (10!) over ibm, sun, microsoft (all 9) and mit,cmu,stanford aben old cambridge universty (all 9 as well).
Kudos for apple but … who else is there?
thx for the news but that won’t make me install the spyware toolbar…
Is the page rank export complete?
viggen – I have dealt with this question also and believe that the only value of PageRank is to get your content crawled faster. In competitive areas it matters.
Atanas has it right, the PR released is a snapshot from around July 21-23, and uses the same data as the August 24th strange, frozen PR/BL event. (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=129939 – what was that, Matt?) The backlinks released Friday are later than that – September 7th, I think.
What a good question…
Dave (Original) Said,
But are the toolbar PR values the exact same values as the one Google’s algo uses on a daily basis?
Actually, I am just curious why you are bothering telling us about a new PR update…. is this the first time you ever did? Are you just playing with people to make us wonder why you are talking about something.. ?
Thanks for the info nonetheless..
Hi Matt
I noticed the pr update, was this all it was? The serp relative to my site have change completely since this pr update happened. You say that the pr update is a snap-shot of an already exciting value within the google system, therefore the serps should not change just because the visual pr changes. Should I wait for a data push to see the true extent of the pr changes.
As far as my understanding goes, the data is certainly not the fresh one.It is around 3-4 weeks old atleast.
Not that I follow PR, but wouldn’t it be better for that livePR analyser thingy to just check one IP address on each of Google’s 44 active Class-C blocks, rather than a random (but fixed) 69 IPs out of more then 700 that are actually active? Although a lesser number, wouldn’t it be more representative of what is going on? … At present, nothing at all is checked an any of the other active 22 Class-C blocks.
Very cool guys. So this is saying, for example, that http://www.full1511.com is going to go from a PR1 to a PR5 in the next update?
http://livepr.raketforskning.com/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.full1511.com
Cheers! Matthew
I can’t find a Link… but to everybody asking the “are the toolbar questions teh same” question…
No they’re not.. Somebody (i think it might have been matt, or googleguy) posted this at one time..
The real pagerank is ever inreasing..
If you picture pagerank as an ever inreasing exponential graph… then chunk up the graph with straight vertical lines.. that’s sorta how it works..
from the original pagerank papers, pagerank is more than a 0-10 in reality.. the graph analogy above is how they come up with that 0-10 based on it’s real number.
(it’s a much better explanation if i can draw while I explain)
I thought it went to 11, just like in Spinal Tap…
HI Matt,
Yes I was following the Pr since friday and some well known spammy sites in the gambling industry has been dropping from 8 to 0 .
is it due to the new pr or is it just during this week when all data centers will gain the right PR in their toolbars ?
I feel great gaining more PR over this week end.
Watching TBPR is for Link sellers and recip goons…
Everyone is always wondering about PR and how it is calculated.. as I have seen very weird results to some sites especially new websites having a lot less backlinks gain PR4-5-6, any explanation on this?
Amusingly, you are PR0 on my toolbar at this moment !
Matt
Thank you very much for your reply to my question asked in the comments for your last post (about problems I’m having with the UK index).
I’m sure you’re very busy and I really appreciated you taking the time to read and reply to my problem. Thanks again.
Peter
Phantom, try the non-www version of Matt’s site, all the page rank has gone to that version.
But if the flux capacitor hits 1.2 Gigawatt’s, will that be enough to boost PR? Ok, I am having a really bad case of the Monday’s.
What good is pagerank? I lost all my page rank went from 5 to a 0.
Doesn’t matter it wasn’t like it was paying the bills. In fact google jerks my stes around so violently I learned not to depend on it’s traffic at all.
Thanks for the update about the update… nice timing !
I did a lot of changes, mainly reorganizing my pages, so had lot’s of index removing and 301’s to do and that was hurting my SERP’s, now things seem to get back to normal …
Or is that just a coïncidence and has nothing to do with each other?
Nice !
By the way … this is also a very nice tool …
http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/fullpage-pr.html
You can check the PR of all the links of 1 page, so if you check your sitemap, you’ll see all the PR’s of all the pages, you can also check the different DC’s.
ciao
Thanks for the update Matt.
And thanks for all the nice pagerank checking tools I found here.
Just bookmarked all of them as I find them very useful.
I should have found this site before.
peace.
Evil Matt Cutts told me this weeks ago….
The PR is a June snapshot. The backlinks are about ten days old.
The fact that Google can only create a PR update that is a full quarter behind the times is awfully troubling.
Matt’s playing with us!!! Otherwise the green in my toolbar would have moved at least 0.0005 mm.
I like this new spam control on your blog though. Is this effective as image verification?
Thanks for the update on pr update anyway!
This “New” PR must be easily a month old. The new links (about 3 weeks old) and already indexed by G still not showing…..
@ Matt Crouch. you ask why he posted this. I am not sure, but I am very glad he did. His brief explanation of the TB Page Rank update process will prove invaluable when that “hard to convince” webmaster does not understand why his PR has not changed yet.
Thanks Matt.
Anyone notice extremely slow indexing of new pages starting a few days before this PR update and continuing today?
Is Google have trouble multitasking? Something just does not feel right…
The supplemental issue doesn’t seem to be totally fixed, I’m still seeing some really WEIRD results… Hope you guys will fix that soon
Toolbar PR is not PageRank. The Toolbar numbers are labels, and that’s all. They could equally well have been labeled A to K. Actual PageRank is a number (0 to nnnnnn…), and not a label. Each Toolbar label represents the portion in the 0 to nnnnnn scale where the page’s actual PageRank lies. So, no, the Toolbar values are not the PageRanks that are used by the engine.
I have some thoughts about whether or not the new Toolbar values are old, and why some people see evidence that it can’t be old, and others see evidence that is must be old.
To the best of my knowledge, PageRank is being continually calculated on a rolling basis. If that is so, then all but the current part of the index that is being calculated is always out of date to a lesser or greater degree. The most out of date it can be depends on how long it takes to move round the whole index. The new PR values are a snapshot, and any snapshot must include current and out of date calculation results (PageRanks).
That’s my best guess, anyway. If it’s anywhere near the mark, today’s calculations will include links that were found and indexed yesterday (they may only have been put up yesterday). And the PageRanks for the part that will be calculated tomorrow only included the links that were indexed some time ago – as long ago as it takes for the entire index’s PageRanks to be calculated. So, if the snapshot is taken today, the ages of the links that were part of the calculations can vary a lot. Some Toolbar PR’s won’t reflect links that were indexed quite a long time ago, whereas some Toolbar PRs could reflect links that were only put up, crawled and indexed yesterday.
Michael: Although you list 41 IP addresses in that [i]SEOlogs[/i] tool, you’re only checking stuff on 19 out of the 44 Class-C blocks that are currently active.
On some Class-C blocks you check just one IP, and on others you are checking 4 or 5 IP addresses. Why not check one IP from each of the 44 blocks instead? Wouldn’t that give a better picture? At present there are [i]25[/i] Class-C blocks that are not checked at all – that’s more than half.
Michael: Although you list 41 IP addresses in that SEOlogs tool, you’re only checking stuff on 19 out of the 44 Class-C blocks that are currently active.
On some Class-C blocks you check just one IP, and on others you are checking 4 or 5 IP addresses. Why not check one IP from each of the 44 blocks instead? Wouldn’t that give a better picture? At present there are 25 Class-C blocks that are not checked at all – and that’s more than half.
It looks like some of the Google tools [ PR , site: , backlink etc etc ] being applied are misleading webmasters into their supposed accuracy, in which many believe, insofar as there is differentiation between DC’s at any one time, plus time lapses and selective suppression of information in total.
It would be good if there was consistancy upon which siteowners / webmasters could rely upon. Otherwise, they have limited status as a “tool”.
Hi Matt,
Will this PR update affect SERPs? Are we going to have also a SERP data refresh / update?
Have a great day!
Not surprsingly, I don’t think Matt will answer my question
RE: “So, no, the Toolbar values are not the PageRanks that are used by the engine”
========================================
I think you forgot the “IMO” at the start
I also *assume* the same, but. would love for Matt to answer my question and I’m going to hold my breath until he does 
why is everybody so fixed on the pagerank ?
Cause PageRank looks “sexy” to SEO’s…. It’s a dream to see a PR10 on your own site… A so called “SEO Orgasm”.
Hi Matt,
I realise you can’t answer any questions which could give anything away so I’ll ask a harmless question. When will the datacentres using the old infrastructure be updated?
Reg
Ideally how much time does it take for PR to update on all datacenters and to be visible in toolbars and PR checker tools?
Thanks Matt,
PR PR PR. It is the same story again this time as was at every PR update. Why bother?
hi matt, i think the following question is generally applicable to a *lot* of webmasters these days: if a site’s PR has been flipping up and down the past few days, can we expect it to stabilize at the higher value when this update/export is over? I think you may have answered it in technical terms before, but I don’t understand the answer… I need it in plain English for us cybermorons… I have noticed many sites that are experiencing this, and a lot of questions on forums from people confused about it.
Hi Matt,
Some SEO experts say that the pagerank you show us is false, it is just a marketing strategy for webmasters…
Why google lets show us pagerank but hides some backlinks results when we use command link: ?
As google said : “don’t be evil”, so may you, please, tell us the truth about that
Thanks,
Paul
Mine stayed the same.
Oh my god, i can’t believe people keep talking to Matt even when he’s not replying, hehehe. Peace
I have been an avid observer of the Google Dance and I have seen great fluctuation between the updates and recently (the last 3 months) I notice that the update has occurred multiple times within a fairly short time-frame. Is it safe to say that the update will be initiated more frequently to ensure accurate information?
Btw, I like the Spam Protection you have set-up, I have implemented the same feature into all my contact pages just about a month ago. Keeps our inbox clean.
Thank you
Matt, my boss gets so excited he nearly wets his pants when he hears about a PR update and yet he has never had a proper link-building strategy; 300 links in 6 years… Could you tell him to calm down please?
Ya Matt I have just noticed what you said there was really a lot fluctuatiuons on different datacenters in this update.
Akash
Matt, Looks like we have a rollback on the last PR update. Would you care to comment on this.
Found here a list of buttons that can be integrated in a web page and showing the page rank. Check here:
http://www.siliconkit.com/resource/index.php?Page_Rank_checkers&normal&print
mikl, I just wanted to add that you missed out a pagerank button. It’s the one I use on my site although i’m sure their are many more. Add this code:
Off course replace mattcutts with your own domain name.
@ Roger Balmer Said,
“”"Cause PageRank looks “sexy” to SEO’s…. It’s a dream to see a PR10 on your own site… A so called “SEO Orgasm”. “”"
You ever got a Orgasm of a high pagerank website?
Hi Matt,
So are you able to confirm that the PageRank shown in Google toolbar is ony as good as the pagerank for that specific web page on the day of the snapshot?. I appreciate that it would probably be impossible to update toolbar pr everyday, but does Google re-calculate for each and every new day?
digpagerank.com Can check all pagerank datacenter.Cool tool i think
Why do different datacentres have contain different PR ?
Hello !
did the pagerank die? Can one always say that it is a quality control mark? will it be replaced by the trustRank? and will the fresh rank be or is already validated? Thank you.
I think we will again see a similar titled post of Matt Cutts in a few weeks. I am curious about the PRs.
I think we will again see a similar titled post of Matt Cutts in a few weeks. I am curious about the PRs.
Yes it is for some bitter and the others pay day? I noticed changes for pages which have been newly issued. From PR 0 up to 3 or 4. What is Ur expirience?
PR:
Shorthand for PageRank: the actual, real, page rank for each page as calculated by Google. As we’ll see later this can range from 0.15 to billions.
Toolbar PR:
The PageRank displayed in the Google toolbar in your browser. This ranges from 0 to 10.
Backlink:
If page A links out to page B, then page B is said to have a “backlink” from page A.
Hah, this came up in a Google search for ‘October 2007 Pagerank Update’ … sigh … 3 to 4 months? How times have changed!
Any ideas, When is the next page rank update. Supposed to be in July,
They said in August, Then September, Now is it October,
Any signs or clues about this update ?
Google takes a snapshot of PageRank values every 3-4 months. I do not know why Google can not say every 3 or 4 months only?
I am watching the situation about updating. It seems to be it should be very soon. Maybe this weekend …
We can only hope the PageRank update will be any day soon. In your Google Webmaster account, under Crawl Stats – is that the live PageRank value, or is that only exported every few months when Google also exports the Toolbar PR’s?
Looks like pagerank from webmaster tools is updated only when toolbar data is exported.
Frankly Matt, I think at this point many webmasters would be glad to exchange their 2006 PR values from the latest Google Page Rank update on October of 2007. Funny how those people who didn’t care about page rank are the first ones to cry about it when the little green bar takes a dip. It’s not to say that the website is a mere shadow of it’s former self, it’s just a more realistic reference point minus the inflated links.
I wish google show’s a live Page Rank Indicator, so we can immeadiately correct our errors.
Seems to me that a lot of people are seeing a delcine rather than an increase. My site still has low page rank. But on some pages on my site when you check the google links it list the home page meaning that in thoroey it should have a rank over 4 right.
I am happy to see my page rank updated, but, most of the my friends who are bloggers and had a high page rank of 4 have been reduced to 3 and 2. Is it because they are not updating their blog, or they haven’t optimized their blog and built links.
Thanks!
My site page rank went from 5 to 6 but my place in google result went up on all keywords.
Could you tell us when was the snapshot taken? Some people believe the pagerank values exported are quite old. I would say they are from mid to 20th Sep. Do you have some details on this?
Hi! I’m new to all this – so apologies for asking a potentially ‘dumb’ question – or one which has been covered earlier. How do I track when a page rank for a specific page changes? Is there software available? All help, kindly appreciated! thx.
I’m curious – does this mean that the PR we are viewing via the toolbar is over 3 months old? How do we see the latest PR.
Cheers,
Yes, definitely you need to query different data centers to find the average PR. It would be great Mat if you could keep PR history and PR prediction updates by date so we all know when will approximately the next PR update start.
It seems to me that rankings is some what linked to page rank updates. Does any one angree?
“… so we all know when will approximately the next PR update start…”
That would be very good. It’s a specially useful information for domain name bidders because bidders can’t know what’s happening with the domain name otherwise.
I read many places, earlier about the devaluation of PR, how much its true.
I know its not a small thing to deactivate the value of PR term.
Any thought on this.
Thank you
Brijesh Kumar
I was very disappointed by my websites http://wolfet.co.uk pagerank after the last google PR update, i thought that i had done plenty enough back linking work to see a big increase in PR, im guessing that i must do 10 times more than i did to see an increase, maybe im just a pessimist but it seems that the big names on the web just get bigger and bigger while us small fish float around trying to pick up the left over scraps, i recently watched some of your many video clips on http://www.youtube.com ,the one explaining what googlebot does with 404’s ect explained with colored M & M’s was very amusing to watch, btw i read here that the google toolbar PR’s are updated every 3-4 months, but when and how often are the google’s PR database’s updated?, is that being updated constantly day by day?
NeuroToxic,
What was the title of the youtube clip?
I am very happy with Google, I have been waiting for my site http://www.puresa.co.za to be ranked and when it was it came in at PR 4/10, it has been up for 2 months and we have put a tremendous amount of effort into our SEO..Thanks, Google and thank you Matt..
I am still trying to find out when the next pagerank update will be? I am also interested in knowing how long it takes google to find the links i’ve posted on different website. Our dry cleaners delivery service would benefit from getting some more traffic, looking forward to seeing the results for our dry cleaners in the future.