Pagerank instability?

Irreproducible results.

[kiril]

Lately, the pagerank of several pages on my site seems to fluctuate between two values--usually a unit higher when I first arrive at the page than when I come back to it from elsewhere in my site. Could this be a symptom of the ongoing update or impending permanent changes in pagerank?

[Brett_Tabke]

Welcome to the club of the ever-flux-pr, where the toolbar meter just isn't accurate any more. Many people don't even get pr meters any more. So as Mike Grehan says: count your self lucky, deinstall the toolbar, get yourself some sleep, and get back to site building.

[mipapage]

Though I agree with Brett (and Mike) about site building, sometimes clients get at us about PR. You can explain all you want about it's lack of significance, but some clients can be stubborn. Here's the way to get a stable result:

Determine which datacenter has the new index and new PR. Ping that datacenter and add this:

ip.of.data.center toolbarqueries.google.com

to your hosts file with notepad. If your on WinXP, the hosts file can be found here:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

Currently the 'new' PR seems to be on www-va, which is
216.239.37.100 toolbarqueries.google.com

I seem to have to set this in the hosts file, shut all browsers and then open to see the results.

[CygnusX1]

Although the PR value in Google's toolbar isn't the most accurate. I haven't had any trouble with my website. It has had a PR value of 5 for the longest time. I can't help but wonder if it is the way people are trying to influence Google with inbound links, outbound links, internal links and just trying to optimized their website to the point of almost breaking rules. I wonder if SEO’s are thinking that they can still get under the bar that Google has set by just bending the rules, and not realize that Google has lowered that bar a bit more then they thought. That they are actually breaking a few rules without knowing it, and their PR value is being effected by that. Maybe Google looks at more then anyone knows on how it gets it’s PR value for a website.

I must say that I don’t seem to have any of the problems that others seem to have, and I can’t help but think that my above statement is true.

One other thing, I have to say that I love the pop-up killer part of Google’s toolbar. I haven't had one pop-up get through.

[mipapage]

I haven't had any trouble with my website.

We're not talking about trouble here. Every so often, Google recalculates PR and that calculation has to propagate across all of the datacenters. While the PR value is not fuly ppgtd, you may 'see' fluctuating PR as you hit datacenters that aren't updated yet.

In your case, as you haven't noticed the fluctuation, either your site's PR hasn't changed, or you just haven't hit www-va with a query yet.

In our case, our main site has increased from a 6 to a 7 on www-va, and most of our clients have also bumped up a notch on -va. Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don't, it depends if toolbarqueries.google.com is hitting www-va or not for it's data.

At least that's my take!

[AjiNIMC]

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

Currently the 'new' PR seems to be on www-va, which is
216.239.37.100 toolbarqueries.google.com

I seem to have to set this in the hosts file, shut all browsers and then open to see the results.

Hi mipapage,

I tried this, first time it worked it showed a pr of 6 but again when I went back to the page it was showing 2. Can You help me to find the prs of my page. Your help will be highly appreciated. Anyone can offer me help.

Thanks a ton
Aji

[mipapage]

AjiNIMC,

Not too sure what to say - I just tested it for my site and others and it worked fine. 'When in doubt, refresh' or Close all browsers and try again?

Maybe there is something else up out there?

Sorry I don't have much more to offer!

[James_Dale]

This is something that will resolve once the update is finished. Always has.

www-va is currently showing your PR, and other datacentres are showing older PR.

I am expecting the values from -va to propogate to the other datacentres before too long.

This isn't anything to do with the toolbar problem as mentioned by Brett, as far as I am aware - though yes, toolbar PR can sometimes not show at all.

[rfgdxm1]

I know of a site someone has that is nothing more than an unoptimized holding page. It has just a few low PR links of little significance. Before the dance it was a lowly PR3. It is now showing a PR6 (!?) and I can't find any link someone might have added somewhere to explain this. The page doesn't rank in the SERPs anywhere in the top 100 for anything it might possibly. Thus, I have to figure this is some sort of Google glitch.

[AjiNIMC]

sorry I forget to tell you that I am using 98 and I have manipulated

c:\windows\HOSTS file,

can anyone send me the thread or the procedure to edit the hosts file again. That will a new addition to my knowledge and will be of big help.

Thanks
Aji

[The Contractor]

Open it with textpad and copy/paste the line below on it's own line:

216.239.37.100 toolbarqueries.google.com

[AjiNIMC]

I did that but that time it wasnt working, now it is working fine. It is giving me the new prs.

All pages(around 70), all above 4. I am happy with this.

Thanks a lot
Aji