How accurate is page rank on Google toolbar?

Shows zero page rank, but in reality has LOTS of backlinks

[peterdouglas]

I've checked out quite a few sites, some that I've made, and some sites that others have made. The Google toolbar with the pagerank indicator often shows zero. However, when I do a link popularity check, it will show many, many backlinks from a variety of unique sites.

The weirdest was a well-established site I did a link popularity check on. With the Google toolbar it shows zero. Do a tranditional link popularity check and it's got over 20 backlinks on Google and over 500 on MSN and Yahoo. It comes up as the first site on a google search for the keyword. What gives?

Some of my own sites have been submitted to quite a lot of directories and such, yet have a zero page rank, while others, with just a couple, or at least, not very many links, score a page rank of 2, 3 or 4. (and with little to no effort, I might add).

How can this be?

[DerekH]

The toolbar is known to be, well, not flaky, but not particularly accurate.

Some believe it's a toy that Google gives out to SEOs to distract them from understanding how to beat the opposition.

Treat it as something that sometimes works. Then again, counting backlinks via Google isn't exactly helpful, as it presents a selection, simply to stop SEOs seeing who links to their opposition and getting the same links...

DerekH

[steveb]

Any page made after the middle of June won't have pagerank yet.

[peterdouglas]

Thanks guys! Some good points I wasn't aware of.

Also, most of the sites I've checked are several months old, and in some cases, several years old.

[Wizard]

It was pointed by Googleguy, that toolbar PR is a snapshot of real PR made every 3-4 months. And it's not guaranteed that snapshot is made at the same time as toolbar update, so if another update will take place in October, it may show PR not from October, but from, for example, August.

So, for example, my new page, launched in July, has toolbar PR0, but it has link from its PR4 home page and in September it gained PR5 backlink from .edu site with main keyword phrase in anchor text, and since then it is constantly Google #1 for this phrase. Its real PR is not 0, as toolbar shows, but it was, I guess, about 3 in August and about 4-5 in September.

If toolbar update occurs in October, this page is likely to have PR4 on toolbar, but it may as well be PR3 - from August. But all pages linking to it are likely to gain some PR in the meantime, so the page will have almost certainly 4-5 after two toolbar updates (6-8 months from now), while its SERPs will be affected immediately.

Right now, though, it's a PR0 page placed on #1 under it's main phrase, it shows no backlinks with Google 'link:' command (it's another G issue like toolbar PR - link command shows nothing but junk), and 2 backlinks on MSN (mentioned before). Nothing weird if you bear in mind how toolbar is updated.

[peterdouglas]

Thanks, that explains a few more things!

[runboy]

Wizard

What about the PR displayed in the Directory?

Reason I am asking is because one of my sites have a major difference in Dirctory PR and Toolbar PR

[BillyS]

Reason I am asking is because one of my sites have a major difference in Dirctory PR and Toolbar PR/

Changes to PR were made visible in the directory about a month ago.

[Wizard]

Many people agree that PR in directory is more accurate, but I'm not sure how is it updated. There was directory update recently, indeed, but did they export the latest PR or not - this is the question. I have only several pages in DMOZ so it's difficult to guess is it their real PR or an outdated one, though less outdated than on toolbar.

[runboy]

In my case the Directory changed to PR0 about 3 weeks ago and my backlinks dropped to 0 also at the same time. The Toolbar still shows PR6 and I still rank pretty good in the SERPs.
This happened the same time my site description and title changed drastically to the worse (No key words) in DMOZ, but I am not sure if the two are related.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

On one of my sites my toolbar Pr is 5 and directory toolbar is 4. Can anyone who has been watching this tell me if this means that my PR is going down?

[ThomasB]

BDW, Google doesn't necessarily update the toolbar PR and the directory PR at the same time. Also the toolbar PR is not necessarily the same as the directory one: [searchnerd.com...]