How I Know I’m Still Passing PageRank
Posted on December 18, 2007
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I was so excited in late October when I was finally given a Google PageRank of 3 here at Philaahzophy. Not only did this mean that I was doing a good job of building the blog into something worthwhile, but it also allowed me to earn more money advertising here. Then came the giant Googlesmack in mid-November. I was first dropped to a PR2, then all the way back down to PR0. This was even worse then being PR:N/A as it states that Google has no confidence in my blog just because I happen to enjoy being paid to express my own opinion on occasion.
There was much debate and hair-pulling over just why this smackdown occurred and what, exactly, it entailed. the big question on many people’s mind was/is whether or not blogs that had their Toolbar PageRank dropped to zero were still passing PR at their previous levels. 
All educated sources seem to indicate that we are, but I just stumbled into a way that I can prove I am thanks to a nifty little site called iWebTool. Designed to show you the PR of a website’s internal pages, it loads any site in a special window and overlays a PR indicator next to each link. If you click on the thumbnail to the right (then click on the medium sized image that appears to make it full size) you’ll see a screenshot I just ook of Philaahzophy.com. Notice all the little PR indicator boxes? Pay particular attention to the ones I’ve circled in yellow. Both of those links point directly to http://www.philaahzophy.com and show a PR of 3. In case your first thought is along the lines of “screenshots can easily be doctored”, just click right here to see it for yourself live on the iWebTools page.
Since you can input any URL into the iWebTools page you can easily check to see what your own actual PR is as well. Sure, it’s not nearly as easy as having it sitting right there in your toolbar, but it’s the only way I’ve found to see the actual PR of a site. I’m not nearly as internet savvy as many of you are, however, so if I’m missing something in this equation, please comment and let me know!
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I checked mine and it’s all zero. LOL! I’m just waiting for another 25 days and I’ll apply for a re-inclusion.
I think it’s possible that the service you’re using has cached the PR3 value from a past scrape. You can just ping the image generator for those .pngs:
http://www.iwebtool.com/images.....phy.com%2F
I just checked for my site on that png generator url, and it’s returns an old PR value from at least two months ago.
The authoritative source for the PageRank value is a user’s fetch via the Google Toolbar and not through a third party. From where I sit, it’s a 0.
Welcome, Brian!
Gotta say I’m both a little shocked and a little honored that a Google employee has found their way to my little corner of the web
More to the point. I suppose you’r eprobably right. It would explain the mixed results I’ve heard from others. Still, it’s a bit odd that they managed to cache the image during the 6 short days I was PR3, over a month ago, when I’d never even heard of their website. Still I suppose it’s possible. As I said in the post I’m not that internet savvy. I suppose I’ll have to see if it fades any time soon.
Interesting Aahz.
@Brian: Are you saying that the displayed toolbar PR of site X is the exact nunber used for calculating the placement of a) site X and b) sites X links to, in search results? In other words, is there only one pagerank (displayed publicly and used in the algos) or are there different values used in different places? Thanks in advance for any further detail you can provide.
Dan,
I’m saying that there’s one authoritative source for PR that’s visible to the outside world, and that’s via the Google Toolbar.
As far as external vs. internal values, these posts continue to be the authoritative places for information.
http://googlewebmastercentral......lling.html
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.....-pagerank/
Thanks Brian. The combination of those posts as the authoritative word on internal vs. external use of PR is insightful. I guess you are saying that Cutts’ 2006 description of toolbar PR is now modified/combined with Cutts’ 2007 post about PR penalty for paid links.
Therefore, paid link penalties can result in different displayed vs. passed PR — and Aahz’s general premise (passing different internal PR than is displayed via TBPR) could be accurate even if his example tool was outdated. Is that a possibility?
Thanks again for the details and Happy Holidays!
Hey, my pleasure
Even if you hadn’t heard of them, it’s still possible that someone who has your site in their blogroll could have retrieved that image…
Yep, that’s probably it. Well, it was fun while it lasted
Thanks again for the input, Brian.
neat tool, thanks for sharing
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