New Site PR7 No backlinks! Why?

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New Site PR7 No backlinks! Why?

prejudice

2:22 am on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

Can anyone explain this? I have a site at Geocities which is PR7 with no backlinks or anything, it doesn't even have meta tags and hardly any html in the page, just a bunch of Javascripts

maybe my Google Toolbar is going crazy, what do you think? And how the hell is it a PR7, makes no sense.

[edited by: Marcia at 4:01 am (utc) on Dec. 6, 2002]

darkroom

2:23 am on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

Hey..
welcome to WW
just to let you know that listing your own website's URL is denied on these forums.

The Contractor

2:28 am on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

Makes perfect sense. It's estimated PR for the page since you are one level down in the directory path from geocities homepage. Don't worry it really isn't calculated for your site ;)

prejudice

2:34 am on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

I did think of that honest lol.
No I really did, but I have some other sites on geocities only one level down which are much less PR.

Are you sure that is the only valid explanation?
If the site was put in Google (properly calculated with a couple of trusty backlinks) would the PR probably go down if I link it with two sites, both PR 5?

mortalfrog

5:42 am on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

If you have no backlinks, you have no PR. Regardless of what it says you have, you have a PR of 0. This will become apparent with the next update, at the end of the month, when your PR will be calculated and the estimate will dissapear.

Just because it says you have a PR of 7 doesn't mean that is being factored into search results. It just means that your page hasn't been fully indexed.

So, if you link to your page from a couple of relevant PR 5 pages, your PR will most certainly go up from 0.

BigDave

7:45 am on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

Actually, as long as there are no backlinks it will not even make it into the index and it will keep using the guessed PR.

CuriousWeb

1:21 pm on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

>Actually, as long as there are no backlinks it will not even make it into the index and it will keep using the guessed PR.

Not strictly true. Sites of less than PR4 will show no backlinks but can still make it into the index. Google only shows backlinks for sites with a genuine PR4 or above...

BigDave

6:15 pm on Dec 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

I did not say "no backlinks showing", I said "no backlinks", so yes it is strictly true.

Playing with link: can be fun and useful, but google has never defined how it works, and they are free to change it at any time. Even the WW theory of what it shows is probably incomplete. It seems there are people that have high PR backlinks that do not show, wut their own sites PR is unaffected, so the link was most likely included in the PR calculation.

JayC

6:40 am on Dec 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

I have some other sites on geocities only one level down which are much less PR.
[...]
If the site was put in Google (properly calculated with a couple of trusty backlinks) would the PR probably go down if I link it with two sites, both PR 5?

Well first, the PageRank wouldn't actually "go down" because it's not really a 7 now. As The_Contractor first said, it's a "toolbar estimate" based on the PR of Geocities; it's being shown because the page isn't in the index but the site (in this case, Geocities) is. But yes, the real PR, once it's available, would likely be lower than the currently indicated PR.

The reason your other Geocities sites have a lower PageRank is because they are in the Google index, so you're seeing their actual PR, not the estimate.