How to programmatically get PR for URL?

Is there a way through code to get the same PR as Google Toolbar?

[androidtech]

Those of you who use the Google Toolbar know about the little green PageRank bar, which also gives you a text description of the current page's PR ("X/10").

Is there a way to get this PR from code (Javascript, page scrape, etc. any format will do)?

thx

[ciml]

I'm afraid not androidtech. PageRank is a valuable set of information which Google only makes available via the Toolbar and the Google Directory.

[jcoronella]

Someone wrote a CGI script for this. It was on some russian site. I saw it here, but can't find it. If you set up a proxy, you can see the PR number come through in plain text, but the request is not easy ("5 minute" easy) to generate.

[SlyOldDog]

Yes you can do it, the information required is all on a site called efactory.de.

I have an application on my PC that does it, but I would never let anyone else have it as I think it would do immeasurable harm to Google if it entered the public domain.

[oilman]

>>it would do immeasurable harm to Google

to be honest I think it would be great of something like that became easily publically available. It would force Google to turn off PR in the directory and on the toolbar and only use it internally. The web could go back to 'normal' and there would be no prejudice when linking. It would be the end of PR bigotry.

Just my controversial 2 cents for a Saturday morning :)

[twilight47]

Just a question...
What's the point of retrieving the PR from elsewhere?
Is it just so one doesn't have to use the toolbar or is it some manner to artificially adjust PR?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just want to understand. :)

[Mohamed_E]

With a suitable program you can get the PR of 100 potential link partners in a nice excel spreadsheet in a couple of minutes. Beats surfing all over.

On the other hand, you will probably want to visit them at some stage, when you will see the PR in your toolbar.

[plasma]

Just a question...
What's the point of retrieving the PR from elsewhere?
Is it just so one doesn't have to use the toolbar or is it some manner to artificially adjust PR?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just want to understand. :)

Google ignores the fact that there are more Browsers than IE and more OSes than Win.

[SlyOldDog]

>>to be honest I think it would be great of something like that became easily publically available.

Try OptiLink. It already is. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

[szlampy]

I agree with plasma: Google tend to ignore all other platforms apart from Windoze. The only time I use Mycrowsnot Internet Exploder is when I really need to use the Google bar. Most of my time is spent working in Mozilla. Even though Mozilla is by far a superior browser IMHO, it's downfall is that Mozilla's google bar on MozDev.org misses some much needed features - namely pagerank, which is very handy to see how new sites are performing in link popularity, etc. If Mozilla google bar had page rank then I would hardly ever need the exploder, except for testing page layout's, etc. If the technology on how to retrieve the page rank was made aware to the guys who volunteer to develop the google bar for Mozilla then they could implement this technology into the next Google bar for Mozilla, which would tremdously help the movement of more people away from the monopolistic mycrowsnot and onto truly free software.

[kaled]

I cannot see Google parting with the information on how to read pagerank data. However, perhaps, in the future, Google will display this information with search results just as they currently do in the Google Directory.

In any case, I remain of the opinion that the PR displayed by the toolbar is largely irrelevant. If someone were to offer to swap links with me I would not use the toolbar to check PR I would use AllTheWeb to check backlinks. Slower but far more informative and reliable. The only problem with this is that ATW counts javascript links but Google still does not (a damned poor show by Google if you ask me).

Kaled.

[benc007]

kaled,

Is there a command in AllTheWeb to check backlinks without including the javascript links?

[benc007]

Is there a way to automatically check Pagerank for a list of URLS of potential linking partners in a text file or spreadsheet file?

SlyOldDog, why do you not like OptiLink?

[kaled]

I believe the instruction to Google to return PR information contains a hash code determined by the url. Without the algo to calculate the hash code, there is no way to programatically determine PR.

It has been said in another thread that the hash code is stored in the IE cache but I don't think this is of much use except to repeatedly check the PR of a given url.

I have not investigated this myself, so I cannot say definitively that the above is correct.

Kaled.

PS
I am not aware of any way to filter out javascript backlinks on ATW. Depending on how the ATW index is maintained, this information is probably not available.

PPS
You could check cracking sites. Someone may have thrown a debugger at the Google toolbar and worked out how to calculate PR. I'm certain that many people will have tried and I doubt it would be that difficult a problem.

[synergy]

I'm interested to know about the Optilink software also.

[killroy]

All you have to do is write a program the remote controls ie and gets the hash from the cash, it'll be slow but you could run 100s of pages over night, and even at a pace not to get banned. Good enough for checkign a few 100 pages every week or so.

SN

[Hunter]

...and gets the hash from the cash...

When I was a teen, it was the other way around...

[kaled]

I did a little research on this last night.

There was a thread in 2002 about a program called PRMaster. This performed PR checking programatically. However, GoogleGuy apparently persuaded the author to withdraw the program. Whether GG applied Kofi Annan's philosophy to the negotiations is unclear.

Kaled.

[Good_Vibes]

What philosophy would that be?

[robertito62]

Kaled,
there are new pr checkers in the market already. They can perform queries faster than what you think. With this new development I agree with Oilman that we might see the demise of public PR sometime in the future.

[kaled]

Kofi Annan, after talking to some despot or other, I forget which one, said something along the lines that having US arms behind you makes negotiation a lot easier (but he put it better than that). Essentially it the philosophy of "Speak softly and carry a big stick." - Theodore Roosevelt I think, but my apologies if I'm wrong.

With regard to (toolbar) PR, I've already decided that it is next to worthless. I've uninstalled the toolbar since I consider the auto-update feature to be a backdoor for viruses, however, I cannot say more otherwise this thread is likely to be deleted.

Kaled.

[SlyOldDog]

Why do you consider pagerank worthless? Considering you have only a few position-rank-contributing elements to go on, you are ruling out a large part of your armoury.

I am quite happy with Pagerank. It is a super tool.

[Gateway]

I know of a site that does this for expired domains coming up and out, lists them by PR in google..

[Iguana]

Pagerank may be worth knowing - but the current toolbar display isn't. It's out of date and not even in line with the out of date display of backlinks.

Luckily enough the toolbar doesn't work behind the firewall at work so I've weaned myself off it

[kaled]

Why do you consider pagerank worthless?

I didn't say that. I said that I consider toolbar PR to be next to worthless. As a software developer, I have to be super paranoid about viruses. If I feel I need access to toolbar PR I'll have have to set up another entirely isolated computer. Right now, the effort required is not worth the reward. The toolbar does not reliably report PR. In the last six months my own site has been zeroed for around three months. This may well explain why a few sites I have have requested links from have not even replied.

As I have said in other threads, I don't believe that the toolbar is reporting the PR used by Google to return results. Again, as a programmer, I understand what sort of bugs are likely in a piece of code. Out-of-date and zero PRs being reported are not bugs that I would consider likely if the Toolbar were generally reporting true PR. The PR feature of the Toolbar is nothing more than an elaborate and modestly convincing con-trick.

Ask yourself this. Why don't Google simply place the PR indicators used in the directory on all their results? Answer : because they want people to use the toolbar. There could possibly be a technical reason. In the old days, it might have been necessary to use the PR of the previous dance but that's all. Now I guess it might be necessary to show PR that is ~3 weeks out of date but that is all.

The PR feature of the toolbar is bait and webmasters have bitten. What more can I say?

Kaled.

[androidtech]

Gateway,

What site is that?

thx