Google PR Update...Finally

It seems that the long awaited second PageRank update of 2005 is finally happening, and although PR and search engine rankings are not directly related this does offer us some insight into the current changes in Google ranking methods.

Firstly, why do we care about PR. Well as we said PR and search engine ranking are not (directly) related. It's common knowledge that Google does not use the PR value of a page when determining search engine ranking positions (or so they say). So why is it that high PR sites seem to get the top spots in results? Well, the answer is simple. Some of the algorithms and statistics that Google uses to determine a sites ranking are also used to determine it's PageRank. Here's a quote directly from Google (http://www.google.com/technology/)

"Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). "

Here Google themselves indicate a relationship between PageRank and placement. So yes, it's true PageRank does not determine search engine ranking, but it's clearly an insight into what does.

At first glance it appears that Google has implemented some of the new back link valuing methods outlined in their March 31 patent application.

A number of sites experienced a PR jump, however it was not as substantial as previous PR updates. Furthermore this new PR update seems to prove once again that blog sites are not subject to the same strictness regarding back link valuing.

The reason of course is that Google likes blogs (up-to-date blogs). This is made clear in the patent application where Google takes aim at stale documents and link spamming:

An expert from the patent application:

“search engines strive to provide high quality results for a search query. There are several factors that may affect the quality of the results generated by a search engine. For example, some web site producers use spamming techniques to artificially inflate their rank. Also, "stale" documents (i.e., those documents that have not been updated for a period of time and, thus, contain stale data) may be ranked higher than "fresher" documents (i.e., those documents that have been more recently updated and, thus, contain more recent data). In some particular contexts, the higher ranking stale documents degrade the search results.”

The document also outlines how they plan to combat link spamming and stale documents:

“A method for scoring a document...based on the one or more types of history data...one or more types of history data includes information relating to staleness of documents; and... generating a score includes: determining whether the document is stale, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on whether the document is stale. “

“determining whether stale documents are considered favorable for a search query...is based, at least in part, on how often stale documents were selected over recent documents over time for the search query. “

The application also expresses the idea of devaluing a link from stale sites:

“adjusting the ranking...includes penalizing the ranking if at least a portion of content from the linking document is considered stale “

It's clear based on the new PR values that are being seen after this latest update that Google is almost certainly using some of these new techniques already.

Link spammers beware!