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]

>>>>is it really necessary to pint out again that the directory-bar covers a scale from 1-7 instead of 1-10?

Uh?

It is 1-10! (Well technically 1-11 as Google is 11 in the Directory :))

[google.com...]

Yahoo 9, yahooligans.yahoo.com 8, Alltheweb 8 etc

[Oliver Henniges]

No, unless there were some very recent changes, this has been elaborated years ago. The green bar in the directory shows a scale from 1 to 7 and thus helps considearbly to decide whether your TBPR is at the bottom or top of the discrete steps of the 10er scale.

It is against the TOS to post URLs but you may google for chris raimondi, an author who is quite famous to have described this.

[Dayo_UK]

Oh - that old chestnut. On the whole I never look or think about Directory PR as it is not the best/most recent indicator - so sorry, I stand corrected :)

Directory PR update timescales are very independent of displayed TBPR - I have no idea when that was last updated - last summer?

I think for selomelo it might have been the case that this lastest toolbar update is already 2 weeks out of date.

This toolbar update has followed the <rk> values for what I can remember when I checked around the beginning of Feb.

[Dayo_UK]

Oliver

Going back to your question early regarding those tags:-

It is just how the serp page appears in the xml format - eg:-

<L TAG="link:" /> Displays the domain name - eg:www.example.com

<C SZ="13k" CID="8zdUBHMdJEoJ" TAG="cache:" /> Is the Size followed by the cache link (the CID is the 12 Alpha-numberic numbers that Google has for every page (forget what that is called)

<RT TAG="related:" /> Just refers to the cache link.

So the xml produces the last line as you would see in the normal serp display:-

www.example.com 20k Cached Similar Pages

The <CRAWLDATE>16. Febr. 2006</CRAWLDATE> is the fresh crawl date that appears next to pages sometimes.

[Jim Westergren]

Very interesting, I am currently analyzing this. Kudus to Hanu!

Want to add something:

If you use the "Multiple DC Current PR Tool" from SEO logs you get the RK values of a domain on 48 DCs with 3 BD DCs listed first.

On one domain I have half those DCs as PR4 and other half PR7 (including the BD ones). About two months ago the actual PR for this site would be 4 (and also shows 4 in current non-updated-TBPR). This was before I started to get links.

Thus I believe that those DCs showing 4 does not yet have the new BD infrastructure exported to it and Google pehaps did not care to update the PR values the last 6-8 weeks. Can someone confirm this - that the DCs showing (usually) lower value or older value is the non-BD-updated ones?

There is also another new site that I started linking recently and some PR7 links was added just recently. The BD DC RK shows 7 for this other site and the non-BD DC RK shows 5.

So, I believe:

BD DC RK: 0-3 weeks old
non-BD DC RK: 5-10 weeks old (approximate)

I have checked the RK values of 30 of my sites and I actually believe that it is the real PR thing (0-3 weeks old). Also the BD DC RK value seem to be the only best "PR prediction" as can seen by 30+ forum posters on other forums.

Oh yes. Another swedish guy just recently made a FF plugin that shows the PageRank but from the RK value "Live PR". His tool is sometimes shifting DC, I will contact him about this to get this fixed to be GD DC.

I believe, hope I am right, that instead of 3-4 months we can see the PR of 0-3 weeks ago.

[Oliver Henniges]

What's puzzling me is the fact that some tools (not that iweb mentioned above) which claim to precict my future pagerank come do different values than the ones listed in the RK-value of the xml-file. Do these tools suck meanwhile? Has the update settled already?

[Hanu]

> 1-10 vs. 1-7

I think Oliver is right. The directory's scale used to be 1-7 making it possible to interpolate between the toolbar PR and the directory PR and derive a more acurate reading of the internal PR. OTOH, who knows how up-to-date the directory PR is. The interpolation technique only makes sense if the directory PR and the toolbar PR are updated at the same time.

[Hanu]

Jim,

Oh yes. Another swedish guy just recently made a FF plugin that shows the PageRank but from the RK value "Live PR".

What's the name of that extension? I tried "Live PR" but couldn't find anything.

[selomelo]

Thank you Oliver for correcting me:

is it really necessary to point out again that the directory-bar covers a scale from 1-7 instead of 1-10?

Meanwhile, I checked the Google directory more closely, and discovered a nice feature that shows, I guess, the PR value more acccurately with 1/4 increments, and I just wanted to share what I saw:

The graphical PR indicator has a total width of 40 px, consisting of two components (pos.gif and neg.gif) and the PR is represented something like:
<img src="/images/pos.gif" width=22, ....neg.gif" width=18...
These are the values for my site, and I think it is equal to a PR of 5.5.

When I said that G directory displays a 5 while my TB PR was 4, I was referring to my visual observation (half green and half grey). Now the green bar seems wider. :)

[Jim Westergren]

"What's the name of that extension? I tried "Live PR" buts couldn't find anything. "

Seach on "Raketforskning", Swedish for Rocket Science :)

I told the guy that made this tool and he has now submitted an update (LivePR 0.9.3) to Mozilla for review. The change is to only get Bigdaddy DCs (66.249.93.104, 64.233.179.104 or 216.239.51.104).

He has also updated the "Live Pagerank" online tool on his site and it now displays the current TBPR and RK values next to each other on over 40 DCs, nice tool.

I spoke to the guy and asked him on what bases he can back up RK as being the live PR. He believes that the current PR value that is now being exported is old and that it is the RK that is the actual PR that Google uses.

I am myself not sure about this. A few times the RK seems to be too high ... I am not sure.

What are your ideas Hanu? Dayo_UK? Others?