Google Pagerank Updates History & What Is Google PR FAQ
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo) -K9 Want to know when the next Google Pagerank update takes place? – Subscribe to Hobo via email or RSS below and we’ll tell you the day Google updates toolbar pagerank network wide so you won’t miss a thing.

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Recent Google Pagerank Update confirmations
- Toolbar Pagerank Update April 2010
- Last Confirmed Network Wide – Dec 31, 2009
- Confirmed Network Wide – 30 October 2009
- Confirmed Network Wide 27/28 May 2009 – Google PR Update?
(Followed by what looked like and Internal PR update in June 2009) - Confirmed – 1 / 2 April 2009 – Google Pagerank Update 2009
- Confirmed – 30-31 December 2008
- Confirmed – 27 September 2008
- Confirmed – 26 July 2008
- Confirmed – 29 April 2008
- Confirmed – 9,10,11,12 January 2008
- Confirmed – 26 October 2007
- Confirmed – 28 April 2007

Graphic by Elliance, an eMarketing firm specialising in results-driven search engine marketing, website design, and outbound eMarketing campaigns. First sourced at Search Engine Land
What Is My Pagerank?
| Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly: |
| Check Your PR |
Google Page Rank – A Beginners Guide
- Toolbar Pagerank and Pagerank are two different, unsynchronised measurements based on the number and quality of links that pass pagerank to a particular page.
- Google Toolbar Pagerank Not Visible? Just because a page has a Toolbar grey bar does not mean a page has no real pagerank – it can mean that of course, but it can mean other things. I’ve theorised Toolbar Grey Pages do not pass pagerank to external sites, and may be an indication Google has an issue with the page.
- A white Google Toolbar generally signifies that the page has a measure of Real Pagerank, and that Pagerank score will be reflected in the next Pagerank update (which happens whenever Google decides will happen) – one of the most common questions about Pagerank is “When Is The Next Google Pagerank Update?
- The fast way to lose PR is to openly sell links on your website. This is now officially against Google Webmaster Guidelines for inclusion.
- The most common reason for a drop in Toolbar Pagerank is simply your website is recieving less Pagerank via the links it has pointing to it from other sites. This could be because the pages those links on them have less PR to give, the links themselves have dissappeared and no linger point to your site, or Google has in fact changed the way Pagerank works.
- At the moment, a tangible effect when Google penalizes a site, is a reduction of visible Toolbar PR. Many sites who openly manipulated Google SERPS via paid review blogging and link-selling had their Google PR dramatically reduced in the last quarter of 2007 in Google’s opening salvo in the “war on paid links‘, or so Google would have us believe.
- Toolbar PR has little or no effect on amount of visitors Google will send you – believe me. Perhaps this is why bloggers who had PR devalued reported no loss of visitors from Google. A reduction in real PR however could see less pages on your site being indexed.
- Many believe Google can’t find all paid links, and are using the Google Toolbar to spread FUD,
- If you install the Google Toolbar you will see a green indicator in your Internet Explorer / Firefox toolbar showing you the Google Page Rank of the page. Hovering over the green bar will give you a number which is the page’s Google Page Rank.
- It’s accepted that Toolbar Pagerank is more than a few months out of date as little as 2 weeks out of date by my observations. That is, Toolbar PR and Real PR.
- Google Toolbar / DC PR is not an accurate representation of your current Real Page Rank and now that Google openly manipulates what you see, the integrity of the toolbar PR is very questionable indeed in some comminites like the seo community for instance – although in 2009, for most sites, it seems pretty accurate and sensible to me.
- Think of Google Toolbar PR as ‘an indication of the PR of what your site might have been a couple of weeks ago.
- To get a higher Page Rank for your domain, you need to get a lot of other pages with PR to link to you. I used an analogy to visualize Google PR, and used this same Google Heat analogy to get a PR 7 site until PR was apparently reduced within the SEO community, and this site fell to PR 5.
- Page Rank flows, and so can be manipulated, channeled, blocked (with NoFollow) and screwed up. My Google Heat article explains how you can channel PR around a site. Just substitute “Heat” for “PR”.
- Remember sites don’t have Google Pagerank, pages do. That’s why it’s possible for an internal page to have a higher PR than the home page.
- The way a page gets Google Page Rank is from links to it and that’s the only way of Increasing Google Pagerank. IBLs (incoming backlinks) from high Google Page Rank pages can give you more Google Page Rank “Juice†than links from low Google Page Rank pages. There is one other factor at play. The Google Pagerank they “give†is spread over the number of outgoing links on the pages. You may get more Google Page Rank benefit from a Google Page Rank 3 page with only two outbound links than a Google Page Rank 5 page with hundreds of outbound links.
- Google looks to be rolling out PR changes month to month recently. One thing you can be sure off: When Google revises Google Page Rank the fastest way to discover it is at Digital Point.
- I’ve seen sites go from anywhere from PR 0 to PR 7 in one update although in 2009 it’s MUCH HARDER to manipulate Pagerank the way I used to circa 2007 when Toolbar PR was a joke.
- One still useful aspect of PR is that when an update happens you can use Toolbar PR to monitor how effectively you have spread potential Google Juice or Google Heat through a site architecture.
- I could go into Google PR being a recursive algorythim, with decay factored in, and probably pretty far removed from the original Google Pagerank paper created by Larry Page who it’s actually named after, but this is a beginners guide and I don’t know enough about the maths anyway. You don’t need to either. Just get links from other sites!
- I think a page accrues REAL PAGERANK within hours….
The Most Important Thing To Understand!
Pagerank is about whether you are in Google’s main index, or not in. It’s as simple as that from my observations. A high PR won’t rank about a low PR page just on PR. The only good thing about a lot of Google Pagerank, is you can get a lot more pages into Google – that’s it. It does not improve rank – it only allows a page to rank, and MORE pages to rank.
More information about Google Pagerank from Hobo:
- Improve Pagerank With Wordpress Comments Plugin
- Can you Measure Live Pagerank?
- PR Sculpting Advice
- Pagerank Sculpting With Nofollow Is Dead
Hope you have found this post of use!
Caveat – Nobody knows how pagerank works apart from Google. I’ve documented what I think I know about PR, and this seems to keep me on the right track. Take it, or leave it.
Get Emailed When Toolbar PR Is Updated
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PR and Backlinks are updated. Great!! We are getting good PR and backlinks for our site.
That sounds good. The graphic for “Google Pagerank explained” is fantastic.
Yeah it’s great but it’s not mine. It’s Elliance, a cracking image, I first came accross at Search Engine Land, hence the copyright notice..
I think the hype has died down on pr updates as less blogs are posting about it.
PR as seen from the toolbar is outdated since PR is actually updated everyday. As webmasters we really should not bothered much about the toolbar PR as it does not determine traffic. What we want is keyword rankings, and an increasing PR is a result of a keyword ranking campaign.
The only usage for toolbar PR is to sell text links, other advertisements, and gaining link partners. Though when caught selling links the PR would go down anyway!
Neil of course you are correct, but there are too many still talking about Google Page Rank to ignore it. Hopefully this post gives a rounded explanation and states I don’t really care for “Toolbar PR”.
Thanks – this really makes a bit more sense!
good article, great tool and great picture, hobo by RSS from now on
I wandered to this site in search for PR update information – seocompany.ca is just not keeping up with the latest updates.
I am really enjoying looking through this site and finding out about your business. I run SearchMasters.co.nz in a very similar fashion to how you run yours – seminars, teaching clients how SEO works, and blog posts about the latest things.
But it sure is hard work keeping the blog posting happening.
Like SEO ibiza, I have now added your RSS feed.
I don’t agree with you’re statement “I certainly don’t give two hoots about Google PR these days, and neither should you, either.”. I believe that while it’s true that PR scores are outdated, the general principles as they apply to the flow of Page Rank are still important and it is advantageous for any SEO to understand the Page Rank function. For example, if you don’t understand that Page Rank is a recursive funtion, you don’t really understand Page Rank.
@ Catfish thanks for the comment but I think it’s clear what I am saying quoting the whole sentence you pulled that quote from:
“I certainly don’t give two hoots about Google PR these days, and neither should you, either. It’s ‘an indication’ of the quality of a site some time ago, but there are better indicators.”
Google TOOLBAR PR is not to be trusted in my opinion.
Regarding “Page Rank is a recursive function” of course, but that’s a little complicated for the scope of this article, don’t you think?
I am already tired to get my pagerank moving beyond one. I can see a long way ahead
.. Thanks Shaun, nice work
That pagerank graphic has shed so much light on the pagerank concept. Its really good.
If Pagerank isn’t a ’sign of success’ these days, then the question is what is?
I guess I arrived here partly because of the subject matter, and partly out of curiousity, to see what makes a site rank at this level.
In the end, it would seem that success is more attuned to whether you get the right type of person hitting your site. I can’t see that having a milliion hits is great if none of them are relevant to you.
That seems to me to just use up bandwdth.
I have also given up on the myth of the page rank as it has never affected our position on Google. We are now seeing a rise in our site through good content and a good site structure.
This seems to working as we are moving up the rankings and our page rank is still the same as it was 2 years ago.
Another thing not to get obsessed about!!
The more I look on this site, the more I find to help with my own site. Even if most of it is beyond me.
Great work.
Thanks for the update
Well loads of information on PR, at last I have couple of my doubts cleared off..A really useful post.
Great Work
PageRank as we see it in the toolbar is totally useless. Sadly many take this to be gospel. But it plays no part in the ranking of your website. I have a funny feeling that this may be a little closer in reality to the Alexa ranking that other websites have. Who knows?
Yup, just a big scam.
The real ranking or Google value of a web page is very valuable however, we’re never going to know that.
Thanks for all the information on pr, really appriciate it!!
I think google has messed the whole page rank issue but oh well, this gave me a better idea about the whole page rank issue.
I find it hard to understand this whole page rank thing, even with all that help I still don’t get it…
thank you this is helpful in explaining to me a few things about the goole toolbar and why the rank on my pages never increases.. regards
i SERIOUSly need help on pr of my website.
I submit my website to tons of blogs that DONT use the no follow tag and not one has been my backlink yet!!!! so i have pr of 0.
HOW OFTEN DOES GOOGLE PR UPDATE?
how often will google visit my site based on PR?
I think the only real value of PR these days, is in how others perceive your site. Which is really only important, if your selling your site or advertising on said site.
Wow, another great post!
Thanks! I’ve managed to learn more from this one post, than I have from reading a BUNCH of other articles online!
It seems Google launching its new ranking now.
Great post there, but I think PR seems to be useless now considering the recent turmoil over the PR patent issue
Nice tips. I feel that I am finally understanding the pagerank process. I wish I knew all that last year when my blog lost its PR4.
extremely useful article which gave me insight into various aspects of page rank. Would be using these guidelines.
Very imformative. A lot of advertising/marketing companies good do with looking on this site to see how the experts do it.
Thanks for the education!
Hopefully not too much longer till the next update, I’ve seen the odd page having 0 Page rank instead of no information on my IPS site, but no activity change on my lesser page ranked one which has yet to get any activity at all.
I’m not sure if that is just a small flicker is a sign or not.
I’ve worked on my sites a fair amount in the past few months not only on adding more content but getting more backlinks so i’m hopeful my site will go up +1 in page rank at the least, that boost will mean alot and hopeful spread out further into the site and into the new content.
With no-follow attributes, it becomes really difficult to get quality back links from different sites. It seems google has started another PR update this week as I can see some changes on my websites PR status.
I see no changes. Blogs with fewer backlinks than mine have a better PR. *sigh*
Has this week’s update been confirmed?
I have seen the changes in my site’s Google Page Rank as well as back links in the last week of December, 2008
Do you know when the next PR update will be in 2009, I am eagerly awaiting it to see the results on several of my sites.
Cheers.
I do not know if Google updates the pagerank, but I already has over 1 years with a PR4, every time Google does not put it more difficult to attract visitors to our site, Google wants all the web traffic for them, is not just be left to compete and I am trying to get by with Google Adsense.Pero really earn a pittance if you have it 5 to attract more visitors.
Greetings.
That graphic is awesome, I will use it as a reference. Well done!
thanks, i was searching for this subject, does anyone know when the next toolbar update is ?
there was a backlink update about 1 week ago, and about 1 month before that, (about the end of january or so) i think there was a toolbar update at the end of january, but it was a bit sporadic.
does anyone know when the next toolbar update is ?
can wait to see the day we achieve a PR10
You wont ever with crap comments like that
[... The only good thing about a lot of Google Pagerank, is you can get a lot more pages into Google - that’s it. It does not improve rank - it only allows a page to rank. ..]
(Sigh) I don’t know that information is a good or bad fact for me, since I always hope more Pagerank will influence SERPs and drive more traffic to my site(s) via organic search..
I’m always coming back to this page for updates. Seems the most reliable by far
Has anyone noticed that it’s taking ages for a new page to get a PR0? Even a content rich page. I managed to get a links page (on a PR0 site) to a PR 0 within a few days yet on another site (PR5) a well-written, copyscaped article gets nothing after several weeks – linked to internally in the same way. Has anyone else noticed this? I used to see miniature PR updates that will gives new pages a PR0 quite quickly whereas real PR updates happened around every 3 months. This just doesn’t seem to really be the case any more.