Can we see PR without google toolbar?

PR tool

[shady]

Does anyone know of a method of viewing the PR level of a URL, without using the google toolbar?

I have recently found a site I was linking to go from PR5 to PR0. Due to this danger, I would like to write a program which periodically checks PR of sites I link to and reports penalised sites.

[shady]

I would be writing this in Visual Basic and believe it would be a very useful tool for SEOs.

The tool would naturally be written in a way to ensure no unnecessary load was put on google. I wouldn't want to receive penalties!

Perhaps googleguy may have a suggestion (like don't you dare, for example :) )

[Brett_Tabke]

Been down this road a few times:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[shady]

Thanks Brett

So it seems that google have understanderbly protected the interface.

I was thinking of using their API, so people using the program would have to sign up with google and be limited to the 1000 requests.

I've contacted the API support to see if they would allow this access. You have to try these things! ;)

[patrick]

It is possible to retreive a pages PR without the toolbar; I wrote a small PHP script that does just that. I have been meaning to see if it was possible via the Google API as well (I would much prefer to do it through that), I want to make a tool that I can cron every month and check the PR of many pages on our site as well as competitor... I don't care for having to load every single page and jot it down.

[shady]

Don't suppose you'd like to share the code/method with us?