PR update? One of my strong sites went completely gray bar

[meelosh]

anyone seeing some pr update activity? one of my strong sites has completely gray barred?

[Jonny6]

Toolbar pagerank is updated each day, however its only updated for a small percentage of sites, and that when updated the pagerank is already months out of date.

The toolbar pagerank of many less trusted sites may not be updated for considerably longer periods of time, as of now, eight months is not uncommon, then add a few more months and you will realise just how outdated and irrelevant the toolbar pagerank really is.

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, Jonny6.

That's a pretty definitive statement that hasn't been confirmed by others, or by Google spokespeople as far as I know. Do you have a reference for it, or some background to offer?

I have noticed that small toolbar changes have been happening here and there over past months (since Caffeine?) but cannot confirm anything like a daily update. How would we know, since changing by a whole unit would be a relatively rare event.

[Jonny6]

"We do update the Toolbar PageRank regularly, even if that's not as regularly as some of you wish"JohnMu
"As Luzie mentioned, we have been updating the Toolbar PageRank (also since April), though it's possible that you don't see it for every URL/site"
JohnMu

[tedster]

Here's the link for that quote: Opinion about PR update [google.com]

I don't see John Mueller saying the same thing you are, Jonny6. His first sentence is saying what other here are saying, and he's making a strong distinction between internal PR and what you see on the toolbar:

The PageRank which we use internally is continuously updated, so even if you're not seeing a PageRank in your Toolbar, rest assured that we'll be treating your site accordingly regardless, and will crawl, index and rank your websites appropriately.

[tristanperry]

@Jonny6 - Toolbar pagerank isn't updated daily. Google's private pagerank is updated daily (at least).

Then every couple of months there's a minor PR update to the *toolbar* pagerank.

Also it's not "less trusted" sites which don't get updated regularly. In-fact many of the recent minor toolbar PR updates have been bringing PRN (N>=1) sites down to PR0. And many large sites haven't seen a PR update since the large major toolbar update in April 09.

So yep, PRIVATE PR is updated daily. TOOLBAR PR is updated for a very small number of sites every couple of months, and a major update is fairly rare (e.g. there hasn't been one in 9 months). It's certainly not the case that TOOLBAR PR is updated daily for trusted sites.

[Jonny6]

Where did I dispute that distinction ?


JohnMu clearly states
"We do update the Toolbar PageRank regularly"

Would you not consider regularly to mean more than just 4 times a year?

"even if that's not as regularly as some of you wish"
"though it's possible that you don't see it for every URL/site"

Would you not consider that to be in contradiction to what others here are currently saying?

Tbpr updates simply are no longer done in the fashion that we are accustomed to.

[cloudtap]

PR is updated every day for sites but visible pagerank has been rolled out since December 1st -- people are seeing link profile changes and everything still.

I'd say, the best thing to do is not worry and just build up your site's pages as much as you can. Visible PR means nothing -- I'd mainly focus on metrics like MozRank, etc -- Use the SEOMoz toolbar and use SEO Site Tools as well as other tools like seo for firefox and look at cached information as well as indexed pages and numbers of links as ranking factors -- PR is too nebulous

[andylc0714]

The page rank DID upate! my site has been crashed from 5 to 0! this update lasted from Jan. 1th till today, 5 to 0 on jan 3th, and back to 5 last week, and result in 0 today, what a tragedy!

[rainborick]

I can't put a date on the change, but today I noticed that two pages that had been stubbornly graybarred for years have suddenly been assigned Toolbar PageRank. These were index pages of major subdirectories on my site, and it was making me a bit nuts that they were always showing gray. They were largely menu/navigation pages, but I'd been fleshing them out more and more over time.

[seoN00B]

i been waiting for the major pr update for ages now...

[nic01ae]

More than 100 sites here and a single change, from PR2 to PR0. But the traffic increased after this change. Too many drops to PR0 as I see to other webmasters, it seems that these changes are temporarily, Google making some changes in their algo or modules.

[System]

The Jan 20 PR Update posts are all collected here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: tedster at 4:09 pm (utc) on Jan 20, 2011]