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If Google has shifted to quarterly PR updates, then we should see something fairly soon.
As for my opinion on Googleguy - his (or her) main value (to me at least) was in refuting rumors about the algo - often saying that certain things would or would not cause a penalty. In this way, it helped to understand what aspects were an issue with Google's algo. This is fine if Google views search engines and SEO as a hobby / fun activity. Basically, Google creates an algo to try to rank pages well, and SEO's try to "game" the system to make sites rank higher based on what they know about the algo. Having Googleguy give feedback made it easier for the SEO's.
For me, SEO started as a hobby, and in a way it still is for me. However, I have been able to exceed my income from my "day job" via website design / SEO, making it a very profitable hobby, and sometimes I have to do things that aren't fun if I want to maintain my income. Google started out as a graduate school project - and in some ways was probably a hobby for the founders. Once it starts to become profitable, it becomes difficult to maintain it as a hobby. The "game" aspect of the whole thing can not be as public - there is a whole lot of money at stake. I am sure the founders and the main algo guru's still take a lot of pleasure in working on the algo's; however, when this much money is at stake, you can't have as much fun with things.
One thing that I find interesting is how Google's corporate philosophy must have shifted since Nov 2002 when I first read the interesting quote here:
34: To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
35: But first, they must belong to a community.
36: Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
37: If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
Actually, I should clarify - the corporate philosophy seems to have shifted from Googleguy to AdsenseAdvisor.
Greed is good is the mantra at the Googleplex today.
One thing that I find interesting is how Google's corporate philosophy must have shifted since Nov 2002
What I find interesting is how G went from being the undisputed, coolest search engine on the planet to being the biggest commercial "donkey of an engine" in less than 1 year, that seems to be malfunctioning 50% of the time and making Y look good? When and how / why did that happen? Could it purely and simply be all about the $$$?.
It seems that the search quality, updates, freshness, relevance and consumer trust in G have all been sacrificed for Adsense and Adwords ... it's absolute craziness.
It seems that the search quality, updates, freshness, relevance and consumer trust in G have all been sacrificed for Adsense and Adwords ... it's absolute craziness.
It is an illusion. How can you get right conclusion if you do not put attention to the facts?
I repeat third time in this thread.
My PR in the toolbar was updated less than month ago. Period.
If it was not updated for you it does not mean that it was not updated for others. May be your old tricks simply stopped to work now. You also should take into account that most of the participants in this thread probably become interested to join it because their PR was not updated. But this thread is not the whole word. You simply have no statistics to claim that PR was not updated for most of web site owners.
I also tried to use other search engines for my searches having the suspicion that Google became less relevant. I had to return to Google. Google is still the best for me.
Vadim.
If it was not updated for you it does not mean that it was not updated for others. May be your old tricks simply stopped to work now.
Strange that it is only you that has had PR update in this thread. I welcome anyone else to say if they have seen it update. I would estimate 99% have not had an update. I monitor in the realm of 100 domains and non have been updated.
I'm not sure what you mean by tricks. How do you do tricks to have PR updated?
I do. You're the only one reporting it.
You simply have no statistics to claim that PR was not updated for most of web site owners.
You can add me to that list of webmasters that has multiple sites experiencing no update for three months. My newest site (late May) has not changed from PR2 in three months on the toolbar.
It shows everywhere as PR2 - except the Google directory, where it moved up considerably from dead last in its category to the middle of the pack in late August. According to the green bar in the directory, I should be a PR4 -PR6 - exactly where I would expect to be right now.
I've worked hard on this newbie adding over 200 pages of original content in the last three months. I've also been lucky enough to add some high-quality incoming links. In addition, I've now got numerous (albiet lower quality) links I picked up just by being in DMOZ.
SOMETHING is happening, we know that much.
2)A true PR update occurs universally, meaning that all sites are affected across the board. Therefore, since just a handful of webmasters are reporting PR changes (while most report no change) there has not been a PR update since June 22nd.
Strange that it is only you that has had PR update in this thread. I welcome anyone else to say if they have seen it update. I would estimate 99% have not had an update. I monitor in the realm of 100 domains and non have been updated.
I will be the first to chime in with the fact that I have experienced multiple Google PR updates since June of this year. I will say though that any NEW pages that I have published STILL HAVE A PR OF 0.
To confirm :- My PR has fluctated on old (2 years or older) pages but my new pages have not gained a visible PR at all since June!
No, we know that nothing has happened with PR since June, and the daily serps changes continue every day.
To me it makes perfect sense Google would stop displaying this for us. All it does is help people like us move up in the rankings.
Ultimately it doesn't really matter; it's just made the game a little tougher to play. Whatever changes and adjustments you make will either move you up, or push you down. That’s the only important thing. I miss the PR and back link updates as much as anyone but we may need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that the nice easy display of these features is being phased out.
Has anyone noticed strange results using the site:www.domain.com command? I created a separate topic about this however it seems it was not approved.
Perhaps the PR calculation was scheduled to happen but something went wrong?
Has anyone noticed strange results using the site:www.domain.com command?
No I haven't. By strange results, what do you mean exactly?
Do they have different results?
They seem to be showing more than 2 results from the same URL.
One of my pages had a PR update the other day from 0 to 5. I wonder why my others did not get any update.
Skunker - when did you first create this page? (ie. how new is it?)
No I haven't. By strange results, what do you mean exactly?
Most of the pages omitted from the initial results.
The data on many pages I now see date back as far as Feb 2004!
Our results are still the same as ever though... just appearances look unsettling when using the site: command.
To me it makes perfect sense Google would stop displaying this [PR] for us
… it's not simply a matter of not displaying the correct PR. I find that pages are ranking accordingly and relatively to their page rank - still. Therefore PR is still a hugely important and a very relevant part of the overall placement of the page within the SERPS.
Although new pages in old sites and new pages in new sites are getting spidered and into the index quickly, there hasn't been a true update in the good old sense of the word for 3 months. Just minor illogical shifts that haven't really amounted to anything in particular, especially if you're following money keywords.
Are the google tools that we have been so accustomed to using for seo purposes to find good sites and link up to them now just a pile of trash that is not worth having as a toolbar?
I think so atm ...
The sandbox is a whole different matter, it does appear those sites have not been given the proper PR they should have, displayed or not.
Does anyone have a sandbox "success" story they can share?
I had. Read my message #22 in this thread.
In this thread you may read that for some (not only me) PR *was* updated.
For me it was not accidental. I redesigned my site to return PR and this has helped.
Something of course has changed because for most of this thread participants PR was not updated.
It is interesting to find out what has really changed because it is clear that PR has been updating but not as usual. I mean that algorithm has changed and this changing cannot be reduced to simple formula “no updates for 3 month”.
I seem understand why some believe that there is a delay. GoogleGuy dropped a vague remark about 3 month ago that some interpreted that it *might* be delay. But the remark was too vague, GoogleGuy never confirmed that there will be the delay and the fact shows that the update never stopped but rather the algorithm has changed.
Because it is so, it may be useless to wait new big changes soon. The PR algorithm will be of course routinely modified but the miracle may never come.
Vadim.
We will know PR is updated when at least one datacenter shows new values. Real PR is relative. You can't update one thing while ignoring others. When your PR display went to PR0, that was not a PR update, nor was it an update when it returned from showing PR0.
Now back to the topic. Using the "quarterly" comment, we can easily give Google till the end of this month. We can then generously give them until October 7. After that, the only conclusion is google is in far worse shape than we are imagining now.
Maybe nobody but webmasters care that backlink data displayed is inaccurate and useless, and that now the pagerank display is also very dated, but that is a trivial point. The point is the Google company displays inaccurate, misleading, poor data in these two ways. An information company should not publicly present bad information, for any reason, be it deliberate sadism or accidental incompetence.
<I'd vote for incompetence except for GG's two comments, which suggest this is a deliberate act of choosing to do bad quality work.>
The point is the Google company displays inaccurate, misleading, poor data in these two ways. An information company should not publicly present bad information, for any reason, be it deliberate sadism or accidental incompetence.
I agree. Either do something well, or don't do it at all.
<I'd vote for incompetence except for GG's two comments, which suggest this is a deliberate act of choosing to do bad quality work.>
I'd say it's both. It's a deliberate step forced by G's inability (incompetence) to continue to return the same high quality results for which they became famous. I see a lot of comments about the relative merits of G's serps in the forums, but not many claiming they are still as good as they once were - or that they are better than they have ever been (which one would expect of a "competent" company widely recognized as the leader in it's industry).
