This is a short post that might hopefully stop the flood of emails that I’ve been getting for the last 24 hours:
Google’s Page Rank seems to be updating.
Thanks to the 47 people who have emailed, Twittered and IM’d me to let me know.
While these updates can be a little exciting for some I’d encourage us all to….
Video created in September 2007
Perhaps the reason for this delayed update in PR by Google is that they’re already using ‘another tool’ in secrecy and soon enough it will be unveiled.
Nonetheless, your advice is excellent. I’ve seen sites that had their PR penalized by Google but still rank well in search engine results and continue to have good amounts of traffic and community activity.
You should have set your camera, and read through the same words again. See if people catch it. ;-)
You are right. I am already observing some change in the way my blogs get ranked.
I don’t get the big attraction to PR …. mine was at 3, now at 0 …. traffic and earnings all be them minimal have never really been better.
Returning some great organic traffic, continually growing and expanding.
Creating interesting content and chosing targeted post headings has been the key.
Firefox is my browser, so I’ve forgotten that pagerank exists.
Why is this number so prestigious? I’m not against it; just wondering.
Sure is… finally! My blog went from a PR0 to a PR2 in the last 24 hours.
Thanks for the advice, Darren. As a new blogger I frequently heard people discussing PR in the forums and other spots and I felt really inadequate as a new PR0 site. I thought this was the only measuring stick out there (or the best one) at the time and now realize it is one of many. I agree, build an informative, honest site that attracts readership and content worthy of linking and PR will come.
The key is to let page rank excite you when it does go up, and to not care if it goes down.
I actually needed this PR update. My blog has been up for a month and a half, and I just hit the point where I was questioning whether or not to continue. Then after watching this video I go and check my page rank and I got a 4/10! It made me realize that all my hard work has paid off! Now I just need to work on actually getting some ad clicks.
After my page rank went from a 3 to a 0 I found myself so stressed out about it that I lost track of my original blog goals. After almost a month of stressing, i promised to focus on content and not SEO.
My site got PR6 !!! I’m happy on that
My site went from three to five over the past few days…Someone said, that’s only up 2, I replies, “hey, that’s over 66%”…lol…
your accent is so funny. where r u from?
Thiago, Darren is from Australia, Melbourne to be precise, sounds much like me…Great place, come visit one day!
Wow, will I ever learn this gooogly thing? Boy, I hope I do some day…
Thank you Darren for the reminder. Quality BEFORE quantity. The more quality and expertise you put into your site, the more the numbers will come. Over time. Time being the key. Good post sir. Good post.
Good advice :)
My site has been 4 ;)
it were 3 at before :)
My blog goes from PR3 to PR4… anyway i was expecting this :)
When will we all get over Page Rank, it has to be the most narcissistic excercise online. My PR is bigger than your PR is almost as bad. You are right of course Darren and your patience with this debate is admirable. Now go back to your analytics and testing and get more conversions and more traffic. Then if page rank is so important to you buy some google shares with your new found wealth.
I was starting to obsess about page rank, and this was a timely reminder of why I should blog in the first place. Thank you for this advice!
Great tips! My page ranks are going up latley. I just focus on the content which is the most important thing.
I hadn’t been paying too much attention to PR, but moving from PR1 to PR3 made me take notice. I appreciate the advice because rather than obsessing about Google Page Rank I’m going to continue to work on making a better blog. Besides, there’s a lot I still need to worry about besides PR.
Mine was 0, still 0. But my search engine traffic has increased significantly. How? Because I target certain keywords, I am using Hittail to monitor these.
Check this one http://www.searchforblogging.com/index.php/2007/12/19/how-to-track-your-keywords-with-hittail/
My page rank has not changed though. Cheers, Samantha
Google is not the only fruit !
I’d kind of forgotten about Google PR, until viewing your YouTube video. Then I was pleasantly surprised to see my two blogs go from PR5 to PR6 and PR0 to PR5 respectively.
Still, it’s just another stat, and from experience I know how much time stats can eat up.
I hope all’s well with you, Darren.
Thanks for the info Darren, as my site is relatively new, I don’t have a pagerank yet, but can imagine how it could affect traffic.
How best to build that up seems like it could be yet another addictive “gotta check that” stat.
Definitely, the content must come first and foremost, and with the lack of frequency of pagerank updates, it seems that pagerank would naturally take a back seat to posting great content. But checking the number of visitors and even the curiousity of knowing which countries they’ve come from has been a slight addiction so far..
Its easy to see why people get obsessed with page rank, its a lot of fun too. It also reminds me of the stories of the gold rush too.
So to give people advice on just focusing on building readable blogs that engage, inform, entertain and enhance people’s lives, I totally agree with… with a bit of commercial thinking behind it for search engine optimising.
All the best
My website’s PR went from 0 to 5..it’s been just 4 month of blogging
Am currently on mobile so cant check it, but one of my friend told me that my blog had got PR3 from PR0. Could anyone confirm?
Video doesn’t seem to be working, get a ‘were sorry, this video is unavailable’ message when I click play
My blog has went up to a PR 5 :)
Morning,
I’m pleased – Ask Owlbert is PR4, Virtual Coach is PR4 and BarbaraLing is now back to PR5.
Life is good. :)
Enjoy,
Barbara
I’ve got a PR2 :D I am happy with it.
Although I know I shouldn’t really pay attention to PageRank I am very happy to say that my PR went from 3 to 4 yesterday, which makes me very happy.
I have been spending my time building a better blog and to be honest with you I almost forget about PageRank, until someone writes about how it is being updated, then I’ll check mine and find out how I did.
well i think darren ur right
people should be focusing on building a better blog rather then worrying about pagerank all the time….
This is soo true. I was one of those guys only worrying about seo first and forgot to do all of the stuff that matters. If you’re blog has good content, links (and therefore PR and subscribers) will come automatically. Focus on your copywriting and content FIRST, SEO is second. Humans first, search engines next
Wait… so you’re saying there’s not some magic formula that’s going to get me all the traffic in the world and let me put life on cruise control even without producing credible content? Darn.
When did the update actually take effect by anyone’s best guess? I noticed spikes in my traffic starting on the 28th that I assumed was because of good content, but didn’t really have a good explanation why they were so much higher.
What kind of difference can a just in PR from a 0-3 make? Does it mean you jump forward to the first page in a list of results for a keyword set where you might have previously been on page four?
One of my sites that i created in February/March 2008 went to a PR2 overnight. Brand new domain and only a half of dozen blog posts. I’m kind of suprised by this and think alot of this PR may be retracted across the board later on. Another site of mine jumped from a PR1 to a PR3 but that one is linked in dmoz and wired.com
yeah it is definitely updating and I wish there was a video camera on in front of me to catch my expression when I saw on a single reload of the page it going from pr 0 to pr 4. 9:00 am seems a bit early to start drinking, but there will be a celebritory one soon enough
Actually Darren, when I first saw it I wanted to blog about it instantly, but then I stopped and said maybe i should wait for people like Darren, or Jeremy to confirm, but neither of you did, so I said maybe I should take the lead in this one.
http://www.balkhis.com/webmaster-world/balkhis-going-green-google-pagerank-update/
I posted that …. My Blog which is very new got Pr 3 ofcourse it was 0 before because it is very new.
And I do agree about forgetting the pagerank and focus on the quality of the site. I even mentioned that in my post that I am not a big fan of Pagerank. I guess I was ahead of most of the other bloggers :) (Makes me feel good)
I didn’t know what rank I was until I saw this post and looked it up. Apparently I’m PR5.
Excellent point, Darren. Sometimes the simplest, most logic solutions are the ones that people overlook the quickest.
Ditto goes for those bogus Alexa scores. Ditto Digg.
All the social networking work and link-swapping in the world won’t make a difference if your blog’s content & design have no long-term appeal to readers.
I would be glad if the current assigned pagerank would stay. Went from pr 0 to pr 4 on a blog that I started in january. Can’t be right I think.
Nico> I have been going through my blogs and found that while the one that is 7 months old only went from 1 to 2 and two of them stayed at pr 0, the one that made the biggest jump was the one that I had done the best job at SEO on. Those two are also the ones that I have been using headspace2 rather than the all in one seo pack plugin for.
I have talked to some others and they too confirm their multiple blogs all went up for doing good SEO marketing and the ones who were only mediocre barely were touched. They also think it might have somethign to do with the amount of adsense you are running. Everyone I talked to who went from 0 or 1 to 4 all were maxed out on it on the home page. people who went up only a single rank weren’t
There is also the possibility that social media like digg and del.icio.us are making an impact too. There is also a possibilitiy the new pr4 is the old pr2.
Nice to meet you Darren. I am not a blogger, but I do run a website and I found this link from the forums. We only have a couple bloggers so far, but I will check to see how they are doing in page rank.
Right now I am working on content, but gotta love writers block!
Thank you for the video, and nice to meet you all!
Thanks for the info, Darren. I honestly could care less about page rank, as I am just trying to focus on getting readers and eyes to my blog…
That’s what everyone should be focusing on for sure.
Anthony
– The Oriole Post
Aha, w00t, y3s!!!1!!1!
My pagerank went from 0 to 4, maybe I’ll rank higher now.
Thanks for this, Darren. I really valued you telling us to just concentrate on building a better blog. That’s what makes sense to me. That’s what I am trying to do – establish myself as an expert on the web. Yet I get caught up with all these other messages, for example, about page rank. For a newbie at all this, it becomes a real trap and very confusing.
Another question – what sort of camera do you use to produce your videos? It is an excellent picture compared to most YouTube videos. Your lips and words are even aligned which is not the case in most. I’ve kept away from vidoes because what I have seen are very poor productions.
9 PR of my whole 15 blogs went down, but doesn’t really matter to since there’s another update to chase on.