Hi ron17134-ga,
I'm first going to address the PageRank™ "little green bar", in the
toolbar and then provide an overview of Google's PageRank technology
overall...
Google's Toolbar -- "PageRank : Displays the PageRank of the page
currently in your browser. In order to automatically update this
display for each page you visit, the Toolbar sends information about
the page you are viewing to the Google servers. Although Google, Inc.
does not collect information that directly identifies you (e.g., your
name, email address) and will not sell or provide personally
identifiable information to any third parties, you may wish to read
our privacy policy and/or disable this sending of information. If you
decide to disable this functionality, you will no longer see the
PageRank for every page as you surf the web."
From http://toolbar.google.com/button_help.html, "Google Toolbar
Features"
So the PageRank feature in the Toolbar actually serves a dual purpose,
to show the user the "importance" of the page rated by Google's
PageRank technology, and to help Google further refine its ranking
technology, by sending information to the Google servers on pages its
Toobar users are visiting. Incidentally, as noted by Google above, you
can disable this feature at any time (select "Privacy Information" in
the Google menu on the Toolbar, but will no longer see PageRanks.
As you know, you can hover your mouse pointer on the bar and a number
will be displayed between 0-10. The higher the number the higher the
page will feature in a particular Google search. The numbers are a
guide, not exact figures. For example, a display of 3 can be a a
PageRank of anywhere between 3.001 to 3.999.
According to several items I've found, if the page is unranked (that
is, a PageRank of 0) the bar will usually display as white. The bar
being "grayed out" or subdued usually indicates the page has not yet
been ranked. I'm using the word "usually" here, because my research
indicates reports that the Toolbar sometimes incorrectly displays
PageRanks, usually around what's called the "dance time", when Google
updates its index. See an interesting discussions of PageRanks at
WebmasterWorld
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/3757.htm
and of PageRanking overall at...
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/3757.htm
About PageRank -- From the Google FAQ: "PageRank is Google's patent
pending technology that rates the "importance" of a given web page."
PageRank is actually the heart of the Google search software,
according to a more detailed explanation that can be found at
://www.google.com/technology/index.html.
"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using
its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.
In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote,
by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume
of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that
casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important"
weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important'."
According to aggrandise.com, PageRank is important because, "...with
near identical sites if they are competing for the same or very
similar keywords the site with higher [PageRank] will figure higher on
the results pages."
search stategy: PageRank Google toolbar
rico |
Clarification of Answer by
rico-ga
on
27 Aug 2002 10:48 PDT
Oh, a clarification based on your question about jcpenney.com and that
the PageRank bar states, "current page is not ranked by Google." As I
noted in my answer, this may be because the page was recently updated,
and has not yet been ranked by Google. It may also be due to the fact
that the home page is essentially graphic, and it may not be picked up
by a searchbot.
Also, I wanted to provide some additional reading on Google's PageRank
technology...
A Survey of Google's PageRank
http://pr.efactory.de/
Google's PageRank and how to make the most of it
http://webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
WebmasterWorldCom Google discussion area...
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/index.htm
And, who knows, maybe they're having us on and it's all done with
pigeons. :-)
://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
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