Google Pagerank

[lolly]

Could be an early year update? I've seen all sorts of strange changes just today, anybody else heard/seen anything?

[Toon]

I noticed a little strangeness yesterday. When I'm on the forum who's online page and I click the last activity bar I get a pagerank 5. This happened last time I set up a forum just before I got a rank but in theory the rank update shouldn't happen until April 08 I would guess.

[LeadMagnet]

I've noticed a few searches jumping around the place.
For example, just for laziness sake (rather than bookmarking or remembering the URL) i've done a search for "i wanna be the guy" (without the quotes) a few times in the last few days. The first time i did it, the page i wanted ( IWBTG! A Very Hard Game About a Boy and 8-bit Masochism! ) was result 4 or 5. Yesterday, i did the same search and it wasn't even on the first few pages of results. Today it's gone up to result 1.
Something's changed i'd say.

This was all of google.ie. As you know, google results differ between domain names and google.ie is buggy sometimes, so it might just be that. A bug.

[Toon]

Deffo something happening gradually.

FILMS you've Never heard of that you SHOULD SEE

Is showing a PR2 and shouldn't really have a rank at all.

[Toon]

Pagerank is starting to appear all over today I sense a google reindex

Images That Changed The World

Frozen Cherry Trees

[crazyleaf]

Something is fishy alright. I think there's a bigger picture here. Google is cooking something big with all these updates. I don't know what but I don't like it.

[tommylogic]

Originally Posted by Toon

Deffo something happening gradually.

FILMS you've Never heard of that you SHOULD SEE

Is showing a PR2 and shouldn't really have a rank at all.

I got PR0 on that one

oops.. that was the first page of that thread.. the link you gave does show PR2... weird

[Toon]

From what I can see google are starting with minor PR pages internally like 1's and 2's and on completion of the index they will grade the site as a whole. One strange thing I've noticed is they're including sites like Virb, Behance etc as backlinks whereas they were very strict about sites like this before.

[Cwilk]

I'm not very knowledgeable about page ranks and how Google works....so I'm lost with this thread. Can anyone explain in easier terms for me?

Thanks in advance.

[Toon]

Pagerank was a mathematical algorithm invented by Larry Page that was a way of voting from one page to another and equalling the votes to give a rank usually displayed in a PR counter as a browser plugin or part of the google toolbar. People started to believe Pagerank meant you would rank higher in the search engines which was never true although people then started to trade pagerank in unethical ways meaning the 'google juice' was being lost to sites that shouldn't rank well but have purchase inbound links from high ranking sites.

I myself thought Google would phase the pagerank out but I'm starting to think they're using it more than ever this is why there's certain fluxtuations going on with certain sites PR. One thing I noticed on the last PR re-shuffle was good internal linking could help your pagerank and I agree with this as it helps build user friendly sites. i.e. nothing should be more than 2 clicks from the home page. This stops buried links and link directories. Add your site to a link directory and try and get to it in 2 links it's not possible from many, meaning the page you are actually listed on has a low PR but you can bet money on the Directory advertizing their self as a PR6 directory just because all the sites listed point to their home page.
I do like the way Google has balls about stuff like this, rather than fold and start a new thing they stick with it and try to beat the cheaters at their own game and lets face it they've got the power to do so. This is also one of the reasons many blog sites lost their PR and their search engine placements in 2007 because they were selling textlink ads and this goes against google's policy on link exchanges.

(the above text is part fact and mostly my opinion I don't pretend to know what google are planning or what they have done in the past, if I did I'd probably be very rich, it's all debatable)