Real Estate Blog - Google Page Rank and the Google Toolbar

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Google Page Rank and the Google Toolbar

Google Page rank of Active Rain

One of the handiest tools as a web developer or any person who is interested in web site ranking is the Google toolbar.

Though the Google toolbar, like any other toolbar or plug-in for your browser and computer, slows down your computer and web surfing speed if for nothing else it has the Google PageRank meter which tells you how important Google thinks a particular page is.

Why is the Google PageRank meter important?
Simply put it is like how important the page you are looking at is to Google...

Okay... but what does that mean?
Google PageRank is like a multiplier by which Google evaluates where each page should come up in search results. For instance, if your page is about real estate and you have the words real estate throughout your site and a lot of links coming in telling Google your site is about real estate then where you come up for a Google search when someone searches for real estate is based on your Google PageRank. Two identical pages will come up different places searching Google because one has a higher PageRanking than the other.

How do you get PageRank?
Page rank is obtained from incoming links to the page. The more links that are sent to a page the more value it has in the eyes of Google. Additionally if a page with a high Google ranking is sending a link to a page, the page receiving the link receives more PageRank than a incoming link from a lower ranking page. A web page linking to many other pages is distributing it's value to those other page but the more links that are going out the less PageRank each individual page will receive from the distributing page. Incoming links can come from the same website in addition to other websites.

Okay what's the point?
The point is knowledge! The PageRank on the Google toolbar allows you to evaluate your website, your blog, and other peoples' sites and pages. If you are looking to build yourself incoming links you should target sites or pages that have higher PageRank. And if your personal website has low PageRank you might need to do some work to get your sites value up in the eyes of Google.

Why is this page ranked zero?
This could be a factor of many things. Mainly it's from not enough incoming links, but it could also be because the Google toolbar PageRank has not updated for that page.

When does Google PageRank update?
Google is constantly updating the ranking of each page but Google does not update the toolbar PageRank meter but about once every 4 months. Google does this probably to keep us all a little in the dark so search engine optimizers, such as myself don't play with our sites daily and watch the PageRank change to "game the system".

What's a Good PageRank?
To determine what a good page ranking in you should compare what your competitors PageRank is. If you are competing in a local market you probably don't need a super high PageRank and a 3/10 might be all you need to come up number 1 in searches. Other more completive markets might require a 5/10 or 6/10. Google and Yahoo! are the only 10/10s. msn.com is 8/10.

Additional Tips
Many websites such as forums or wiki sites use the rel='nofollow' tag to halt page rank from transferring and reduce spammers from creating links on public sites. If you are participating in link exchange right click on your link to make sure it doesn't have a rel"nofollow" tag on it or you may be getting a raw deal.

Get the Toolbar

Posted by Abraham Chaffin - Cambria Real Estate on 07/03/2007 10:47 PM

Comments (23)

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23 Comments on Google Page Rank and the Google Toolbar

JUL

2007

Abraham, I have 2 websites and one of them is suppose to have a 1 out of 10 ranking the other one has 0. When I search for my area I never find the one that has the 1 ranking, but I do find the other that has 0. Why is this?

Abraham, great explanation and nice tip!

You always have some good info! Rated a 5 for ya...should be featured!

JUL

2007

Carmen - this could be for different reasons. Your site that has a page rank of 1 might be setup wrong with the meta tags and may not really be optimized for the search that you think it is optimized for. The one with the page rank of zero may have a higher ranking than you think - the toolbar has just not updated yet. I have many pages that come up on the first page of searches with a page rank of zero. But I'm sure when the toolbar updates they will have a higher page rank. Hope this helps.

David - Thank you glad you liked it

Celeste - Thank you for your support =D

Happy 4th Everyone!

Google is such a vast and might creature! All hail google!

Thanks for the info on GPR.

Thanks, it does help to know that.

Great stuff here! I have bookmarked it so I can catch up with it later today or tomorrow. I know I have lots to do with my website. I'm not the greatest when it comes to links and how to do some of the technical things. Everything I have done so far I have done myself on a free website.

Very enlightening! Something I really need to investigate to be able to keep track of what I need to do to spruce up my website.

Page rank in the toolbar is really NOT relevant. I NEVER look at it. If you look at high ranking websites, VERY regularly, sites with a lower pagerank OUTRANK those with a higher pagerank. VERY OFTEN. If you talk to most people who do SEO, that's really not something that means much to most people... similar to ALEXA rankings. Unfortunately, too many people look at those as a measure of success, and it's really NOT.

Pay attention to your title tags, your description tags and your keywords. Keep your site focused and keep each page focused on one topic. Make your content original and relevant. That's what makes a difference and that's what you should pay attention to, not the little green bar in the toolbar.

Fred - I appreciate your input though I disagree. The Google PageRank effects your ranking in search results tremendously. The content of your page and meta tags greatly effects your position as well but it is the combination of all the factors that in the end produces the result of where you are placed. You can read more about Google PageRank and how it effect search results here at Wikipedia and Google.

Wikipedia:
"While just one of many factors which determine the ranking of Google search results, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google's web search tools."

Google:
Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked together to create a superfast search engine.

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.

Well, I have about six sites (PR4 and PR5) that rank in the top 5 of Google searches on the top real estate keywords - and they consistently OUTRANK (several) sites that are PR5 and PR6! That's been the case for over 5 years. I have sites that are PR3 that outrank PR5 sites - consistently!

PageRank and the PageRank toolbar are two different things. PageRank™ is an internal algorythm that Google uses and you do not see and cannot control and is really NOT represented by the little green bar - the little green bar is irrelevant is what I meant to say.

I think if you talk to most people who do SEO (like myself).. you'll find that most don't pay attention to the toolbar. But what do I know...?

Just a quick sample - first one I tried! Search on Nashua real estate

Three PR3 sites outrank three PR4 sites!

PR3 #1 YourOwnHome.com

PR3 #2 NHHomes.com

PR3 #3 RudyMayer.com

PR4 #4 NHDreamHomes.com

PR4 #5 BeanGroup.com

PR4 #6 HomeGain.com

PR4 #7 NewHampshireListings.net

If that little green bar means something, it ain't workin' very well!

Fred - PageRank in the little green bar is updated only a few times a year, while Google's main PageRank algorithm is updated constantly.

The PageRank system is not the only algorithm that effects where you come up on placement, many other people who do SEO will tell you the same thing (like myself). I guess it really comes down to who you ask.

According to Google, PageRank represented on the toolbar does effect your position on results, that's good enough for me. However the little green bar is not an exact science of where your site will be placed in results, and this has not been claimed. It is a great indication of where Google is ranking your page -

Google uses a lot of factors to determine where your site will come up when you search Nashua real estate. If you have your entire website dedicated to this subject and thousands of pages that discuss Nashua real estate all pointing to your home page which has title, description, and body text about this subject you are going to do very well in this search even though you may have a lower PageRank than another site that only has one page on the subject yet has a higher PageRank. Google takes many factors into consideration when choosing where you are placed and this is one example but there are many others.

Does PageRank effect where you are placed? If Google says yes, I would have to agree with them.

I actually am attending a seminar in a few days with the guy who is Product Manager for Crawl Systems for Google. Meeting an actual human from Google is next to impossible, so I'll see what I can get out of him..... Personally, I think the age of the domain is a much more influential factor than the green bar.... Those sites do not have thousands of pages... or even dozens of pages... dedicated to that subject. They also have less than 20 backlinks from Google pointing back.

Pagerank had very little to do with placement. It does have to do with the authority of the website to link to, and rank other pages.

See

http://socialmediasystems.com/blog/

This has become a sophisticated specialty; you would be better off spending your time selling real estate!

JUL

2007

I specifically asked Dan Crow, the product manager for crawl systems at Google about the Google toolbar. Basically he said it was worthless. It's not updated often and is not an indicator of anything of value. PageRank is an INTERNAL algorithm that Google uses that IS important that is based on inbound links and the quality of those links, but it NOT represented by the toolbar graph. He said if you're concerned about who has high PageRank and want to evaluate your pages or your competitors, look at where they place in the SERPS, not the toolbar indicator.

JUL

2007

Interesting information Fred - glad to get that straightened out.

Yes, the page rank is a greatway to tell how relavant a site is. Its taken a long while but my site http://www.soho-properties.com has just achieved a page rank five. Google has the most relavant search engine MSN and Yahoo place far to much relavance on the URL name.

JUL

2007

Great post, I have been using the Google toolbar for a couple of years and really like it, it comes in handy to see the page rank of the sites you are on.

JUL

2007

Great post! Also, some sites can show up with a "0" or grey bar because they have been penalized.

AUG

2007

For those who are interested, here is a link to a recent article that outlines PageRank misconceptions in detail....

AUG

2007

"Great post! Also, some sites can show up with a "0" or grey bar because they have been penalized."

--This used to be the case but it is no longer necessarily true anymore. The gray bar used to indicate a penalty for sure but now it also shows up on pages that are new or have not earned any link juice yet. I have a number of pages that were just launched that are showing the gray bar and I know for a fact they are not penalized because they do show up in searches, sometimes top position. Honestly, I was hoping that this new development indicated the death of the toolbar page rank but I am not so sure anymore. Too many people concentrate way too much energy to it. It is but one factor out of hundreds that Google uses to rank pages and like everyone hs mentioned it is outdated anyway.

MAY

2008

Go info. Thanks.

Without getting geeky here, time and presence on the web means more than anything, and especially if there are good meta tags written into the source code. It's a seniority thing when web presence is assailed by web crawlers that have been sniffing the source out for the last ten years. Rankings don't happen overnight, regardless of how much time and effort you put into your source, or any amount of money you spend to link up. Good old html meta tags still do the trick, and do it well. And so does patience.

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