Will PageRank Ever Update Again?

Filed in Google Page Rank on Aug.13, 2010 By Keith Lunt

I was looking through some forums when I noticed a theme, lots of people worrying that PageRank might never update again and getting upset that Google has not done a major update since April 2nd.

Well here is the fact – there have been minor alterations since (up and down) so it is coming. When though, who knows?

Getting upset that Google has not updated its PageRank is a little unnecessary. The comments were that it is unfair after all of the hard work people have put in that PageRank isn’t updating.

But, those people ‘working hard’ to improve their PageRank are the people that Google is trying to detect and punish! We have no automatic right to an increase in PR just because we build thousands of links.

It is also important to remember that the green bar creeps further right (or left, if you are unlucky) after the event. An increase is not a sign of better things to come, it is a sign that the site has already increased. Google updates its own records weekly, but only updates the toolbar display when it wants to.

Which brings us to the question – why give away such major ranking information and provide a free tool that allows people to rate websites and give a basis for selling links, which Google frowns upon.

The answer is simple. Google needs us to want PageRank as this means we want to have the Google Toolbar, which means that it can track what pages we are looking at.

This tells us what pages on a website are popular, what websites are bouncing and which have lots of people reading them. That can then feed back into the search results so that sites that real people like can be listed above those that are just spammy in the search results.

In order for us all to run the PR widget, we need to be watching the ranking. And if it never updates we will get fed up and remove the tool.

So it PageRank will update soon, but when I don’t know. I wouldn’t expect later than early October though!