Google's PageRank? It's a messy thing.

[vicky]

Hi,

I uploaded my website few months back. I carried out only the on-page optimization activities on it. but to my surprise its PR rose to 3 within 2 months. i am totally confused as i heard that Google keeps the website in sandbox for 3 months or more. can anyone explain me how it happened?

[mattinertia]

Must have picked up some links from somewhere? Have you got a Google Webmaster Tools account? That will show you the incoming links that Google has picked up. Or you could use Yahoo Site Explorer.

One PR 4 link could do exactly what you describe...

[Shaddows]

PageRank is not neccesarily anything to do with the sandbox.

The Sandbox is where you cannot RANK IN SERPS.

PageRank is a value derived from the number of backlinks any given page has (modified in lots of ways, such as prominance, repetition etc). Internally to google, PR is extremely accurately calculated, iteratively, several times as day.

Toolbar PR (TBPR) is somewhat related to actual PR. However TBPR only gets a major 'push' (update) about once a quarter, with some people reporting mimor change in between. Some things to say about TBPR- its not necessarily accurate, its definately not current (apart from the first week after the push), it can be buggy, and G also use it to 'give a message' to the page owner by grey or white-barring a page that clearly has real PR.

So yes, messy. And even messier if you do not get a clear distinction in your head about thise three things
1) TBPR
2) Real PR
3) SERP Ranking.

[vicky]

to mattinertia: i only carried out on-page activites no off-page activities. i once submitted an article on Knol. thats it.afterwards i didn't do any off-page activity.

[jimbeetle]

Vicky, you might want to go through our Google PageRank faq [webmasterworld.com] to get a grounding on what PR is and how it works.

[jatar_k]

you can also visit the Hot Topics thread pinned to the top of this forum which includes the thread jimbeetle linked to
[webmasterworld.com...]