Which Webpages Get Page Rank

Back to looking at which pages get page rank and which don't inherit anything.

Recently I took on a new customer with an existing site. He was a bit upset that his current webdesigner was going to charge £60 + VAT just to renew the URL (the guy is using the same registrars as me and they charge under £8 plus VAT). He was also shifting his concentration slightly away from scooters and more to motorbikes, so wanted a copy of the website under a different name.

It's an OK looking website so it was just hosting changes, plus I gave him a content management system so that he could change the bikes he had on display - with his previous designer he had to send him the details and once every few months the bikes would be changed. That was another bug-bear!

So I took over the website, created new pages to display the bikes (PHP rather than HTML to access my database) and created a copy of the site, with a different sort order - let's avoid that duplicate content filter.

He's just asked me to make a slight change to the sites, so I was looking around the pages. Most of the pages, including the new ones, are now in at PR0. In fact, both sites have the same distribution of Page Rank.

On both sites the home page is PR0 - not something to be proud of, but then it's not an SEO optimised site - it's a contact point for his magazine adverts.

On both sites all of the bike details pages are also PR0.

The enquiry form, with very little content (just the field names) is PR0 on both sites.

The contact form on both sites, with matching address, phone numbers and email address (word for word the same - both display the one email) are both PR0 - so much for the duplicate content filter...

But the 'company' page - with details about the company and 125 words in the text as grey barred on both sites. Both pages are cached, so it's not that the search engines haven't found them.

The only major difference, and this is because it's a site I've inherited rather than designed, is that the company page is reached only by an image map link, whereas there are text links back to the bike pages, the home page and the enquiry form. There's not even alts / titles within the image map - something I would have done if I'd written the site myself / been asked to optimise it.

But this alone is not stopping the inheritance of page rank as the contact page is also only available through the same image map. And that's got PR0. Depending on how you count it, it's only got around 20 words of text on that page.

So, the company page isn't grey barred (on both versions) because it's only linked through an image map and it's also not grey barred because it's not got enough content - the contact page has less. So what can it be?

The smallest bikes page has around 250 words on it, along with pictures of 4 bikes. There's no links to other pages or anything, you have to phone for details.

So I think it's one, or a combination of:

- Google doesn't like the duplicated information, but is happy when the duplicate information is contact details.

- Google doesn't like the content.

- Google is cleverly detecting which pages could be of interest to people.

I suppose it is the pages that are most likely to be of use to people searching the internet that have page ranks. People aren't likely to be searching for the company history, but might want to contact them after seeing a magazine advert or might be searching for an offer on a bike.

I think a few more investigations are required to see the effect of page rank on other sites I manage.

Page Rank - Doesn't Always Go As Expected

I've been waffling a lot about page rank recently and I've noticed that the more I try to work it out, the less I know!

The theory goes that page rank is inherited from the linking in pages. Take a customer's PR5 website, you would expect all of the pages linked to from the home page to be PR4 - some are, some aren't.

There are 2 pages on the site that are only linked to from 1 other page. That other page is grey barred. So what PR do we expect for them? Well only 1 link each from a grey barred page. Experts will tell you they also will be grey barred. Actually, they are both PR3.

Take also the links directory of that site. Every page points to the resources page - which is grey barred. It in turn points to the actual links pages, which are inter linked but not linked to by the rest of the site. The only way to find these pages are by clicking through the grey barred top level page.

So do we expect the whole links directory to be grey barred? Of course. A lot of pages are - but then they are 'new' so that's right. But there are dozens of links pages that are PR3.

The top level page just has the standard text that's on every links page. The welcome, actual directory etc. So remove this duplicate content and it's an empty page. Somehow, Google has decided to jump that page and give the PR straight to the actual directory pages.

It's looking like to get a good PR you need at least a couple of paragraphs of unique content on the page and linking somewhere above the page from a good PR page. If the content is too similar then it gets ignored. Possibly there's something about other information linked to from that page - I'll have to explore more with my mortgages site that started this off and see where it leads me,

Using Page Rank

So what precisely is page rank used for and what can we learn from this?

Take a search on my business name - Janric. It returns (today) 21,200 results. Not only is my own website listed up there, but also professional directories that I'm listed in, Suduko puzzles (???), another business with the same name in another country and many, many more, including some of my customers' sites where Janric is mentioned.

Even typing Janric Web Design gets almost 5,000 pages - and this page will also be added to that list soon! So, what are the most relevant results to my search?

Well I'm glad to say that in both cases my home page is top. You would hope so in the second case, but when it's just Janric alone, maybe that's not so much to be expected.

Well what has had to happen is that Google has examined the page and links into the pages and seen that Janric is relevant to them. It's used its on page and off page factors to decide to list my site highly, then if there has been any doubt, the PR4 of the home page has put it to the top.

But it's not the highest PR page with the words Janric on it. A customer's site is PR5 and that has Webdesign by Janric on the bottom of every page. And it doesn't appear at all towards the top of the search results. Google has correctly ordered the results. It is interesting to note though that the link text is standalone - not in a paragraph. A customer's site with a lower PR that has webdesign by janric in a copyright statement at the bottom does appear higher up. So a link within a short paragraph is showing more weighting than a link on it's own from a much higher PR page. Makes you wonder if link directories are worth the effort...

But this example shows that page rank alone is not enough to get you listed top on Google - other factors are important. Only when everything else is equal does PR matter.

What is Google Page Rank?

So just what exactly is Google's page rank? I've previosuly explained it in terms of what the values can mean, but how is it calculated and what is it used for?

Without getting into the full maths, an overview of page rank goes like this. All search engines want to provide the most relevant results to their users. If the results are good, internet users stick with the search engine. They then do more searches and are more likely to be about to click the adds at the side of the results.

Google, and other search engines, try to find which pages are most relevant to your search terms. They can have a quick stab at how relevant the page is based on content, context etc. But when there are hundreds of thousands of results, they will have lots of pages with 'equal' importance. It is at this point that Google use page rank.

This is the official story according to an article I was reading a couple of days ago. But, although it is backed up by the fact that results aren't listed in page rank order, there are exceptions where page rank outweighs the results of the on page factors.

Try the famous 'click here' search and the first result or two don't have either words on them - that's the power of incoming links. So maybe there should be considered to be 3 factors:

1 - the page content
2 - the incoming links pointing to that page
3 - where the above are equal, the page rank

That could explain all of the above and what we see in results. There are many times when I click on the cached version of a page and see a comment that a certain keyword was only found in links pointing to that page, not on the page itself. This impliess that incoming links have a good amount of weight - probably equal to the content itself.

Why, well we'll look more into Page Rank tomorrow to see. I like to keep the posts short, simple and to the point!

Don't be the end of the web

It has long been said that search engines like pages with internal links - it implies that the page gives an overview, leading to more detailed information. And I've been reviewing my own website in the light of the recent page rank update.

I noticed that on the whole, there's an apparently random scattering of PR3 and grey barred pages, with the home page PR4 - why??? I've also often mentioned customers who complain they are not top of google on a 1 page website.

Well it was interesting when I noticed that the majority of pages that were page ranked had links to other pages in the main content. Not just the menus and other side bars.

What were the exceptions? Well there's a contact page and (OK, very naughty!!!) a landing page. What's special about these to break the rules - well they both display phone numbers - in the content.

I also mentioned yesterday that the portfolio page had gone from grey barred to PR3 in this update. What had I changed?

Well, at the time of the last update it listed 55 - 60 other websites and linked to them. Now, it links to internal pages, each of which points to the customer's website. So this has moved to the theory of giving more detail.

I'm starting to look over other sites of mine and there's a pattern forming - more information as I uncover it! But it looks like the 'perfect page' on Google has plenty of original content and some internal links or contact information in the page content.

Very interesting! Question is - how far does this need to be pushed to work?

Page Rank Update

I'll break off for a day or so to look at what has happened last night with a Google Page Rank update. On the whole, apart from new sites I can only find sites that have stayed as was or dropped 1 PR. Is there a theme?

A PR5 site has dropped to PR4. Shame! Interesting to note that the add resources page is now grey barred (from PR3???) and some content pages have gone from PR4 to grey barred. These were a bit off theme - her site is about accommodation in Oxford, but she also shows adds for accommodation in Italy & South Africa. Now whether Google is that clever, I don't know. But I suspect a couple of internal pages dropping PR could be enough to bring the home page Page Rank down by 1.

Lots of new sites now have Page Rank Zero, which is progress. I put in a load of changes to my own Janric website, hoping the new pages were there in time for the update, but it seems to have taken place quicker than I expected. 2 previously grey barred pages are back to Page Rank 3 but the portfolio page is now grey barred. Possibly because the portfolio is quite big and links to 57 sites from the one page? Maybe it's time to split that down a little.

Another web design site I work for has only 29 sites in the portfolio. It's a newer site and that page rank has gone from grey barred to 2, giving weight to too many links.

Sadly, after all my efforts recently for my mortgage rates site there's been no change there and it's still hovering between pages 5 and 7 of the results.

On a positive note, remember the first Seo Experiment? Well, one of the sites in that has gone to page rank 3 - the other 2 are grey barred. It's the one WITHOUT the target=_blank in the links that's made this change. Maybe there is something in that experiment after all?

What Anchor Text Is Best

Yesterday I looked at What Links Are Best - today, What Anchor Text Is Best?

The two go hand in hand. Pick a good link and good anchor text and you have a match made in heaven. A link that's sure to earn you grace and favour and move you up the search engine rankings. If it's a really good link, it will appear on Google when you check for back links, and looking at some really popular sites and some don't have that many links showing.

But others have huge numbers of back links showing, and don't necessarily perform well. It's not all about quantity - it's about quantity. So what should the anchor text include?

Traditionally it's been stuffed with the target keywords. But I think that if Google hasn't already started to ignore them, then it soon will do. I was with a customer yesterday and looking at his competitor's site, which recently dropped out of favour. The top site for a search term he's competing on has 19 links in, his site had 300+ links in. Yet it's the 19 links site that does best.

His competitor won't / can't divulge his link building strategy. He leaves it to an SEO company and they won't say what they are doing so that others can't copy. Sounds a get out to me. But why has the site with 19 links in listed so highly?

Simple, it has got better anchor text. I also happened to notice they have exchanged links with one of my (unrelated) sites. So I've started looking through their links to see how they link back - and I was very (pleasantly) surprised. More tomorrow when I've checked the rest of the links.

Google Page Rank

Let's stop for a moment and before I charge headlong into another experiment and see exactly what Google Page Rank is.

In short, it is a measure of how popular your page / site is according to Google's latest ranking. That little Google Page Rank bar at the top of your screen is seen as a measure of success (or failure) as it turns from grey to green. Maybe too much weight is put on it's exact value by well meaning people. But Google is a major search engine, it makes this value known to the world and like it or not, it's a measure that's here to stay.

A grey barred google page rank used to mean a banned site or very new page. But now it is all too frequent and basically means an unpopular page. A Google Page Rank of 0, 1 or 2 means a fairly unimportant (or very new) site / page and it's unlikely that the page will be read by Google very often – so changes might only be picked up once per month.

A Google Page Rank 3 or 4 is about the average, but recent updates have seen a lot of falls, so 3 might be more frequent that it used to be and 4 harder to come by. At this level Google will be visiting weekly.

Page Rank 5 is good, rare and seems hard to maintain for an average site. You need to have some good links in – probably a one way link or two from a quality authority site. For example accommodation sites can get this through being listed in good accommodation directories.

Page rank 6 and above is reserved for quality sites with trusted links in and here we are getting into the realm of daily visits from Google to collect changes.

Why Does Google Display Page Rank?

Why does Google periodically make available its page rank? And why does it seem to coincide with major changes?

Page rank is being constantly updated. If you assume that pages are always displayed in an order based on page rank (and other factors of relevance) then by displaying all pages in a site (using site:) then all pages should be shown in page rank order.

To test this, I need to view a site immediately after a page rank export – but this assumes that page rank hasn't been exported from an old version… But it would be a good indicator.

So try it now on your site – do all pages appear in PR order – a few weeks after the recent changes. Probably not. This would imply that Page Rank has been updated since – but not exported. And this is what is supposed to happen – the export just gives us an idea of what is going on, not the actual hard values that are used.

So why? It generates far more traffic to Google in looking up the values for every page you open. It means they need a copy of the PR database for the public view (given they are not making actual values public). They need to maintain and update this system.

First and most obvious is that our browsing behaviour is reported to Google. It can track which pages are in use and popular in sites. But when popular sites drop from results, this isn't a major factor.

So what else can they be achieving? And is it me, or do they always export after major changes to the listings? Are they making the data available so that the real world then sees what's going on, have a guess at what took place and start to complain at what we see as unfair results within this – sites missed and sites unfairly hit?

That would then give them chance to refine their algorithms and make corrections. And it would be far easier than have a team of people sitting their trying to monitor millions of sites and the resultant changes!

Could Google Punish Some Links?

Would it be fair of Google to penalise links that make heavy use of keywords in the anchor text, as I suggested that it might be yesterday?

Outright no. I have a page about "Secured Loans" on my CompareMortgageRates.co.uk web site (yes, notice site name for safety!). Given secured loans is a keywords would I then be expected to change the anchor text to something strange (links as shown on the right)?

Overall, probably yes. It's a technique employed in links directories (which Google frowns upon), links sellers, spammers etc. It probably would catch more people that Google target than it would hit who should escape.

So it is something they could have tried. Just a pity that my mortgage site talks so much about secured loans, unsecured loans, mortgage calculators and other keyword specific anchor texts.

As I mentioned when I discussed Starz graphic links are being followed – and in this case followed well. Yes with no apparent SEO benefit because there isn't the chance to stuff the link full of keywords. In this site's case, every graphic link has been followed and all pages on the site are of equal page rank.

Google does evolve. Maybe this is part of the next evolution. Maybe they've tried to knock out the target sites and are now watching the drama unfold and seeing which other sites have been unfairly hit so that they can further refine the criteria and get closer to "perfection". After all, why else would Google make publicly available it's page rank? That must cost Google a lot of time, effort and cash. What do they get from it?

Google Punished Paid Advertising?

It's been talked about that the October Google update hit sites selling links. But how?

Well there is a page on Google to report such sites. But could Google have really checked every one of these reported sites and included it in a bad list? Highly unlikely. This would be a lot of processing of exceptions, which I'm sure Google would prefer to avoid.

Instead they have probably done what they have done in the past when they found spam sites etc. They've studied the pages and decided what these guys are always doing that other pages don't always do. More to the point – what patterns do the links show that natural links don't show?

Well paid advertising links, especially in blogs, will be written into an advertorial. There will be an agreed number of links from the post to the advertiser. All of the links will be live – no redirects, no 'rel="nofollow"' tags etc. And if these links are for best SEO, then the link text will frequently include keywords.

Notice that last one, we're back to keywords in anchor text. Now, if what I talked about last week about my theory that Google ignores keywords in anchor text, then maybe I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Also badly hit were massive link directories. Google is known to punish link farms. And don't most link directories also use keywords in the anchor text?

If this is what is happening is this fair? I'll take a look at that later in the week.

Improving Page Rank With Links

So is Google Ignoring Links With Keywords? I think it could be. It's certainly a way for it to get out a monster it (and other search engines) have created.

A while back there was keyword bombing where people teamed up and used inappropriate anchor texts on links to popular websites for a bit of fun. Google acted against these links individually. But if they realise there is abuse of the system, why not ban it all together?

It's an obvious move. People outside of Google work out how to falsely optimise sites, so Google changes the algorithm. It has happened before – alt text used to be a guaranteed way to the top, as did the title text.

It is known that many directory sites have suffered a drop in page rank – namely those selling one way links. One way links are known to really improve page rank and Google could have stopped this industry by reducing the page rank of the directory sites abusing their page rank. Including keywords in the anchor text was another way of optimising pages / sites and is often used in directories. If you are paying to improve your page rank then you want the best – so you get your keyword / phrases in the anchor text.

So why should Google not be able to work out that stuffing anchor texts full of keywords is (a) typical of directories and (b) a sign of cheating? Reduce the power of links using keyword phrases for anchor texts and drop the page rank of sites that do that a lot and you penalise the directories from 2 sides at once.

You also penalise innocent sites. Those that maybe are legitimately using these keyword phrases – possibly accidentally.

Maybe the percentage of such links should be taken into account. Maybe one day it will. But if you are link building to improve your page rank, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Have at least some of the links using your site name or description – not just your favourite keywords.

Starz Ceilings on DIY SOS

I was reviewing a site that went live a few weeks before the last Page Rank update - Starz Ceilings. He's already 'Starred' on these pages (sorry – couldn't resist!).

The guy's products are about to be featured on the TV this weekend – something like Starz Ceilings on DIY SOS. So we're just giving the site a once over. I noticed that the home page had gone in at Page Rank 1, not bad given the site was only 4 weeks old at the time of the latest Page Rank export. What was interesting to note was that the rest of the site was also Page Rank 1. Usually for a new site I expect the internal pages to be 1 ranking lower than the home page, increasing only as the home page rank increases.

If that was not puzzling enough, then the fact that every link uses graphics makes it even more puzzling. Traditional theorists have always said that links using images don't allow search engines to spider the site. The theory is that search engines derive no information about the pages through the link and don't follow them.

But if these pages are all cached and all equal page ranked, then Google is visiting the pages and liking the links. The fact that Google can derive nothing from the anchor text isn't hindering the work – if anything the result is better.

I only noticed this after yesterday's post. But it does make me wonder more is Google Ignoring Links With Keywords?

Consider for yourself the sites I've shown. Those with graphics instead of text do well, so do those not using keywords in the anchor text. Those using keywords are being dropped…

Google's Page Rank

More about my confusion with Google's Page Rank.

Looking at the links in the paragraphs at the bottom of the mortgage site one paragraph has a lot of popular keyword phrases. These pages are grey barred. The other paragraph doesn't intentionally have a lot of popular keyword phrases, but some probably are well searched on. Those that could be well searched on are grey barred, the rest are Google Page Rank 1.

Seems to be a big coincidence? I looked at a couple of other sites or my own that are also struggling and were once quite good. Both have been Google Page Rank 4 until recently. There's my Mobile Phone Site and the Holiday Cottages Site. Until recently both had good home page Page Ranks, but the 2nd level pages weren't page ranked. Both use (legitimately) keywords / keyword phrases in the anchor links.

So I surmise that maybe rather than it being the length of the paragraph that the link is in maybe Google is starting to ignore links that use strong keywords in the anchor text. Not necessarily always, but probably in coalition with other factors. For example, maybe if one or two links on the page use high density keywords but then there are a few more that don't then you are OK. Looks like my sites are triggering the factors and I'm suffering!

Google Page Rank

I mentioned yesterday about my confusion with Google's Page Rank. I left the post a little open at the end as it was dragging on a bit.

What I noticed through my new Promotional Items website was that all but 1 of the second level of pages was cached with a Google Page Rank 2. The missing one was cached, but grey barred (there are now more pages like this – they have been added recently).

It's been confounding me as to why that one link page didn't have a page rank. The page has existed as long as the rest and there's never been a problem with its links. So what is different about it?

I tried something different when I set up the navigation on this site. I actually reduced the amount of optimisation for 2 reasons. First, it looks better, but also just in case Google thought it too much. So I purposely did not include whole keyword phrases in every anchor text. This worked fine, except for one link in which it still came out as a popular keyword phrase.

You can no doubt guess which link this was!

And guess how I have been optimising the mortgage site – that's right, by using keyword phrases in the anchor text. Of all of the links that appear on every page only 1 isn't a popular keyword phrase (and most are actually the most valid descriptions of the page – I'm not spamming). And that page is the only other Google Page Rank 2 page on the site.

A bit more investigation is needed here!!!

And Still Page Rank Confounds Me!!!

I was looking through my Compare Mortgage Rates site yesterday to see which pages were cached on Google and which had a page rank.

Most of the pages are cached, but with a grey bar. Which is strange - I always thought grey bar meant not cached on Google???

The home page and one other hold a very disappointing PR2 (was 5 a few updates ago). 14 pages are page rank 1, even though these are only linked to from the 2 PR2 pages. There's also a PR0 page that has not been touched or linked to for about 2 years!

The strange thing is that the main pages - those that are linked to from every other page on the website, are all grey barred (but cached). Whether my hosts have had some regular problem around the time of the page rank update that I was not aware of seems an unlikely explanation. More likely is the positioning of the links on the page.

I've realised that the links on every page to the main pages form a nice neat column. But those that Google seems to be following are a paragraph. The one PR2 internal page is not only in the column of links but also included in the text.

I've noticed on other sites using a similar layout that the home page is PR4, but the internal pages are not page ranked.

I'm starting to wonder if Google is trying to detect link exchanges by using some algorithm along the lines of if the link is on a line of it's own delimited by <br> then ignore it.

A lot of link exchanges would be detected this way and it would throw weight into proper links within text. And looking at various sites that link to a well performing site, not one is using the line break. But it means that internal links structures in a vertical format are penalised.

It's also interesting to note that the one links scheme that I notice always does very well allows the link to be placed mid paragraph.

It wouldn't fully explain all of the strange results I'm seeing, and another new site of mine (Promotional Gifts) seems to go against the theory. It has a very similar row of links, it's home page is PR3 and all but one of the 2nd level pages are PR2. Only 1 2nd level page is grey barred. Something else stands out about that link. But that's enough for today...

Your comments and observations are welcome. Please post a comment!

Google Is Getting Cleverer...

Yesterday I was talking with a customer about link building and general search engine optimisation.

We were looking at various sites, including my Compare Mortgage Rates site and working out why that had dropped. Looking through Google, it's 550+ links that I've checked are still in place are reported as only 8 links. This massive drop is now been blamed for the site's massive drop.

We then went on to look at my customer's other site and his competitors. He named the top site traffic wise (out of his research) and it was a big name I recognised, using affiliate links, ppc and a huge warehouse setup. But the surprise was the second placed site. This was a guy he knows who runs the business from a spare bedroom with stock in a friend's barn. He wasn't a rich man when he set up in business, just very clever at what he does. He's beating the next best sites we looked at by miles - and these are millionaires happy to throw their pounds into marketing their sites.

When we started to look at how he was getting his site to the top of the listings - the tricks he was using. It didn't take us long to see that he was using techniques that I'd heard about before, just maybe not invested enough time in trying them out.

But, on the whole, he wasn't wholesale link building. We looked at another site I maintain (for a customer) and of his 600+ links only 12 show on Google. Less than 4%. Seems that Google is getting good at detecting link building and just ignoring it.

So in a day or so I'll at what this guy was doing and what we can all learn from him. And I don't think the answer is spamming people for link building. Gone are the days of Ms Yeager & co sending me masses of emails telling me they've just visited my site and how good it looks....

Sites Dropped From Google

The saga of why the Mortgage Rates site so suddenly dropped from Google continues, but may be getting closer to a resolution.

Yesterday, I searched Google for half a paragraph of text from the home page and was surprised to find 18 results. All very similar to my own site. Even more surprising, my site wasn't there - not until I clicked the 'show similar sites' link.

Right above my site was a directory listing that linked back to my site. The text it had used to describe my site basically consisted of 50% of my home page. I've already described my problems when the content of a web site was duplicated by a directory.

Looking at the page, it was cached in Google, but grey barred. Thanks to the weekend's PR export and my look at the Latest Page Rank Update on Saturday, I was able to conclude that the page had first been cached in the previous 8 days - my site was dropped 5 days ago.

So that's who I'm blaming (for now) for my site's fall from grace and the loss of a large part of our daily income. The reaction here was that we demand that the listing is removed or changed, but that assumes there are contact details on the site; that the person will actually respond; they will respond quickly and Google will pick up the changes ASAP. If the page is favoured above our own page, it's likely that it's new but long term Google will put weight on that page and having a link out of it will be a benefit.

My solution was to reword our entire home page, take the chance to tidy a few pieces up and just make it look different from the other 18 I've found. Then wait for Google to come visiting and hope we are back where we were.

Google Page Rank

It's quite interesting (for me) that Google's Page Rank has updated today - after a gap of almost 6 months. What makes this update interesting, apart from the fact that I've had a few sites suffer go down, is that because of this blog, it's the first time that I've had new pages added daily that I can use to see how Google has tracked the page ranks.

And I record this as much out of interest and to compare to in the future as I do for a study into Google Page Rank. If you notice anything from my results or learn anything, don't keep it to yourself - post a comment!

First,the blog home page has gone straight in at Page Rank 3. Excellent! Only 2 sites link to it - my own and brit blog.

None of the pages added to this blog in the last 7 days have a Google Page Rank - all are grey bared. Pretty much to be expected.

All pages added in the previous days (3/10 to 20/10) have a Google page rank of 0. This means that Google has taken into account all pages it new about up to and including 7 days ago.

Pages prior to from 2/10 and earlier have a page rank of 1. This must mean that Google has given them some credit for existing some time back. Maybe it indicates that the previous actual update of Page Rank happened around this time - the toolbar page rank is just what is exported on an adhoc basis. This would mean that either the 2 to 3 weeks means the pages have counted as aged more, or (and I prefer this theory) that Google is updating Page Rank about every 2 to 3 weeks.

Lastly, for some reason the August posts are grey bared. This is probably because the blog was just starting up and were quickly archived, before Google had a real chance to take an interest in the pages.

It's also interesting to note that 2 of the experimental blogs are now page rank 0 (as opposed to grey barred).

These are (of course) those 2 that are linked to. The one with the 'clean' links is PR0 on home page and pages up to 20/10 (1 unexplained exception). The one with target="_blank" is PR0 on the home page, grey bared on the rest.

But another similar (and slightly older) test blog remains grey bared, even with links from 1 site that aren't using the target function. Another blog, again with 2 sites linking to it, starts with a PR0 (it's brand new - links from the last week or so.). Looks like there's a big difference to explain there...

I'm sure this is one post I'll be referring to in the future - to compare how page ranks change!

When Is A Link Not A Link?

We've all been sold the benefits of link building and we know full well that if we don’t have any links into a site it won't get listed on the search engines, or at least it won't stay there for long. But how much time and effort do you spend on this and is it really necessary?

SEO companies will tell us it is vital. And as these places are successful, it probably is. There are loads of pros and cons, I'll come back to them in a few weeks.

But a couple of weeks back I was looking at what sites link into my main web design site. Currently I've got around 100 sites live that I've built for customers, all of which should be linking to me.

When I look at Yahoo, there are thousands of links into my site. But Google shows only about 50 pages. And I would expect that Google won't count links in the PR algorithm that it doesn't display.

This was very puzzling so I started looking deeper into this and of the approximately 50 pages linking in, that represented only 13 of my own sites. What's happened to the rest?

So I started looking at the listed pages and the sites that weren't listed as linking. I don't know which is most beneficial (looking at the included or excluded), but this week I'm taking a look at the results and I'm going to start an interesting experiment…