Google PageRank - Google Toolbar Google PR versus Reality

Google Toolbar PageRank versus Reality

Google Page Rank as shown on the Google Toolbar does not update very frequently.  Lately it has been updating 3 or 4 times per year and that may become less as time goes by.  Google claims that actual PR or PageRank, a trademarked concept of Google Corporation, is updated on a continues basis but that the Google Toolbar numbers are updated infrequently based on taking a snapshot of the data and pushing it out onto the server that tells the toolbar what the value of PR for a particular page is.

Google Toolbar PageRank is shown as a little green bar on the toolbar.  The value shown on that bar is shown as an integer and can range from 0 up to 10.  In reality, the PR scale is based on continuous numbers based on a logarythmic scale.  Actual PageRank values are numbers such as 3.831 which might be shown as PR 4/10 or PR 3/10 on the toolbar scale.

When you look at a Google Toolbar PageRank value, keep in mind that you are looking at archelogical data, similar to an anthorpologist examining the skull of a 100,000 year old ancestor of ours.  Only Google has the current real data and we can only infer what those numbers might be today based on trends and a knowledge of historical changes.

Ths number shown on the Google Toolbar PR scale is minimally useful and has little relationship to today’s reality.