Pagerank queries - the <rk> parameter

What do such figures as Rank_1:1:6 Rank_1:1:5 mean?

[selomelo]

We already know that toolbar PR is in fact an historical figure. When you query google for current PR, you get some mysterious figures such as:

Rank_1:1:6 Rank_1:1:5 Rank_1:1:4 Rank_1:1:4 Rank_1:1:5 Rank_1:1:6 Rank_1:1:5 Rank_1:1:0 Rank_1:1:1 Rank_1:1:5 Rank_1:1:2 Rank_1:1:3 Rank_1:1:0 Rank_1:1:0 Rank_1:1:3

These figures are for a site that has a current toolbar of PR4.

I searched the web for an explanation, but failed to get a good one.

Is there any idea as to what all these magical numbers mean?

[Dayo_UK]

That intresting Jim.

I Still think that those RK (well the BD ones) values are the calculation by Mozilla Googlebot for Big Daddy and have not been applied to the serps yet. (must be soon though now rollout is complete - if they are going to be - MC has talked about an imminent PR update)

These values can be 0 as is shown currently without changes appearing in the serps.

Whether it is 0 to hide or just a temp situaton is the question. <rk> values are still there on a info:domain.com search (which is TBPR) - Lots of tools use that query to get current PR - so if G wanted to stop them why not stop that too.

Purge and refresh IMO.

[edited by: tedster at 4:10 am (utc) on Mar. 26, 2006]

[dazzlindonna]

Purge and refresh IMO.

My feelings, exactly. Things should get real interesting, real soon.

[Dayo_UK]

Things should get real interesting, real soon.

Indeed.

Lets look at some of the facts.

Big Daddy Launched with comments from MC that it is infastructure and not to expect ranking changes. (Most people would probably not notice any difference in this interation was the message)

Some differences are noticed between Big Daddy and Non-Big Daddy - but not major ranking changes on the whole.

Big Daddy has a different calculation of <rk>

Mozilla Googlebot is confirmed as crawling Big Daddy pages.

RK figues go to 0 (to me this shows that <rk> can run independent of the serps and therefore is probably/possibly a calculaton that may not even be applied yet - maybe due to the Big Daddy changeover)

MC confirms that a PR update is imminent/in the pipe line.

So we should be near a situation where the Mozilla Googlebot generated/calculated PR/BL and other ranking factors take over from normal Googlebot PR/BL ranking factors. For a lot of people that is not a big deal as both normal and mozilla Googlebot should come to a similar calculation of PR/BL and the other ranking factors - but for sites which had crawling difficulties under the old Googlebot serp and crawling changes should be significant.

[Jim Westergren]

Very interesting Dayo_UK, and I think you are on the right track here.

It could certainly be a purge and refresh but I actually think more that Google didn't like that value disclosed and all kind of guys making tools about it and so just put it to 0. Why would he then read my article? And the refferer URL is some strange Google URL redirecting to my article.

Frankly, I don't know. Could be either one.

Let's see. This is interesting. If we are lucky MC will blog about it :)

[selomelo]

In his last post, Matt Cutts invites people to ask questions of a general nature for some of which he promises to provide an answer. And Among eligible ("fine") questions that can be asked, he specifically makes reference to <rk> values:

Examples of fine questions include:
- Is Bigdaddy fully deployed?
- What’s the story on the Mozilla Googlebot? Is that what Bigdaddy sends out?
- Any new word on sites that were showing more supplemental results?
- Is the RK parameter turned off, or should we expect to see it again?
- What’s an RK parameter?

Now, it seems that he have something to say about the Mozilla and <RK>, and will probably say them soon!

[Dayo_UK]

Well Matt has updated his blog and answered the RK question.

Well it was a fun little tool for a while.

[Frederic1]

Q: “Is the RK parameter turned off, or should we expect to see it again?”
A: I wouldn’t expect to see the RK parameter have a non-zero value again.

Q: “What’s an RK parameter?”
A: It’s a parameter that you could see in a Google toolbar query. Some people outside of Google had speculated that it was live PageRank, that PageRank differed between Bigdaddy and the older infrastructure, etc.

--------------------------

Well he didn't really answer. He just said "Some people outside of Google had speculated that it was live PageRank". He didn't say it was not Live PageRank :(

[BillyS]

>>Well he didn't really answer.

I agree, he didn't answer the question.

[Jim Westergren]

Yeah.

I interpretate his answer as:

"This is not for you guys".

Also he writes "Google toolbar query", which is also called RK but is something else ... not the the SERP XML RK.

Either MC don't know so much about it or he perhaps intentionally makes it confusing.

Just my 2 cents.

Anyway, I leave this subject now.

[rkhare]

Some people outside of Google had speculated that it was live PageRank, that PageRank differed between Bigdaddy and the older infrastructure, etc.

what i could judge from mc's answer is that it was definatly something important and google was embarassed to notice that we could logicaly find out the importance of one of their confidential tool. I believe that they are now disguising rk value as something else and hiding it somewhere else.