The Easter Eggs & The Easter PageRank Update
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Returning from Easter holidays the SEOs found a surprise: Google has once again updated the Toolbar PageRank values.
For those of you who regularly check out the Google Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube this is actually not a big surprise. Matt Cutts has mentioned in the video “State of the Index 2009” (22:45) that generally they try to avoid doing big changes that might upset webmasters, before holidays.
To be accurate they seem to do those changes 1 day before Holidays. Keep in mind that the previous PageRank update took place on 31 December 2009 while this one occurred on 3 April 2010.
How “old” are the “new” PageRank values?
As you know the PageRank that you see on the toolbar is just a snapshot of the real value. Google calculates PageRank continuously but they usually update the toolbar 3-4 times per year. Additionally instead of releasing the actual PageRank values that they calculate, they publish a special rank that uses a logarithmic scale and that ranges from 0 to 10.
Based on the analysis of our Database and on observations on many pages all over the web, we could say that those new values have been calculated between the 23nd and 24th of March.
Are there any changes in the Algorithm?
Obviously it’s too early to make any assumptions on whether a significant change took place on PageRank calculation algorithms. As always the winners of the game are the webmasters that use white hat link building techniques.
If I had to make a guess on what it might have changed, I would say that Google continues to experiment on how to weight the links of the page. Obviously they tend to weight less the links placed on footer and I believe that this trend continues. But again since I hate speculations I will play it safe and I will say nothing! 😉
When should we expect the next update?
Matt Cutts has told us in the past that updating the PageRank every 3-4 months is not something that Google does on purpose. Nevertheless, I think that it would be reasonable to say that the next PageRank update will take place on August 2010.
Feel free to share your thoughts about the new PageRank update and to leave your comments below.
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