Google index updates

http://www.seologs.com/google-updates.html
100 days... Why are they taking so long?
Are Google now performing smaller more frequent updates? If so, should we even worry about major updates?


I saw changes on a project I'm currently working on in 2-3 weeks, so I assume some level of updates were taking place, but still no PR or links update. What's going on???

I haven't seen any PR updates, but I've watched Google change the location of my sticky footer fives times in the past week. For the keywords "Sticky Footer" the page went from no rank to 5, then to 3 then to 15 then to 1 and now it's at 2. PR doesn't matter at all, anyway. I have a low PR, but a lot of my articles and my main page itself shows up with expected keywords.

PR doesn't matter so much for specific searches (like 'sticky footer'), but it is still the core of Google's technology. I'm not saying a high PR page show up top, but a page has a high PR when its doing all the things it should in order to be at the top for a certain term. Also, Google uses it's PR information long before it's made public...

I just wanted to know what "Google is thinking..."

I've seen all so often while doing searches for certain keywords/phrases that the sites that appear at the top have much lower PR than say a site that doesn't even appear in the top 10 results.

Which leads me to believe "as nice as PR is to have and the higher the better" that high PR alone may improve your SERP's but when combined with relevant site content will do much better.

PR doesn't affect your rankings. It's only a measure of the number of sites linking to that particular page.

PR won't decide what your ranking will be... [edited, I'd missed the "won't"]
But sites with a high PR generally rank well...
PR is not the cause or reason for rankings, rather a characteristc of well ranked sites...

Thanks spinal007 for the more appropriate explanation, as I do agree with your terminology.

At last a PR update shines upon us poor souls of SEO world...
Now I can use this information to analyse whether my linking strategies have been working out....
*checks*
...yep they have!
www.weclearjunk.com has enter the rank with a PR1 (the usual for new domains) and most the top level pages of the domain have entered with a PR5 (eg.: furniture removal london).

Doesn't mean the pages will be top for every search, but it does mean the site's PR is being focused on the right pages.

Woot, just checked my PR and it's back up to 4 I hated seeing it go down to three.

Yeah I had notice some changes happining late last week in the Ranking of the tool bar PR. Although, it seemed to fluctuate up and down. I figured giving the weekend things would settle and we'd see a more realistic reading.

I'm interested in the PR results of your weclearjunk site, as a rule the home page ends up with the higher PR, but then again this depends on ones linking strategy.

The weclearjunk site is a new project. It had no PR assigned until this week.
Indeed and it will in a few weeks or on the next update.
From my experience, the frontpage is always assigned a PR1 initially.
Then either a) the deeper pages bgein to transfer a bigger share of their PR to the frontpage OR b) Google allows the frontpage to have a higher PR.
But then I'm just guessing. Does anyone know for sure?

I don't believe site's front pages get a PR1 automatically. I designed http://sertomalv.org and it's been up for almost a year. Still has a PR of 0. Not that I'm worried about it... I'm probably the only person linking to it.

I can't believe mine is 5!!! omg lol

How long has that site been up with content on it?

1 year and 3 months lol, i think a pr5 for that long is quite good going

Yeah, that's really good. Mine has been between 3 and 4 since its inception. I've been getting really good rankings on my articles lately, though. So hopefully I'll make the big leap to 5

Any site can get up to PR5 just by following the rules:
- good code
- good urls
- semantic content
- appropriate keywords, description, titles
- good internal linking structure

The big leap is getting past PR5 into 6s and 7s. Then you need a considerably higher number of links/traffic.

WRONG: (got domains mixed up!)

Ryan, (you silly sod), I got worried when you said your site had been up for a year and still had PR0. That normally means you're banned or have been penalized for something. I checked and turns out you where looking at the wrong domain. Your site has PR5:
www.sertoma.org is different from sertoma.org (no www.).
Add a little code to 301 redirect all pages without www. to the correct url (with www.). If you don't know how to do it, PM me and I'll help you out

CORRECTION:
Something is not right. Google has indexed 9 pages from your site and they all have PR0. Read this for more info. If you want a hand sorting it all, just give me a shout.

PS.:
This tag is useless and invalid: (based on this information)
<meta name="robots" content="all" />

It's sertomalv.org not sertoma.org... PR is sites that link to yours only. It has nothing to do with content, structure, keywords, etc. Rankings do, PR doesn't. Rankings are somewhat independent from actual SE rankings, but as you suggested, PR tends to be a good guide for general keywords.

Despite that the site has a PR of 0 (for both www and without), a Google search for "Sertoma Las Vegas" turns up the site at the third position. It has a PR of zero because just about no one is linking to it. It's keywords are fine, but the linking isn't. This site is actually a good example of keywords on the site trumping the PageRank.

Just in case you didn't notice, I did correct my previous post. (I realized I'd looked at the wrong domain).

With regards to PR 0 and external links, it is possible to have a PR3/4 without any external links, as long as you have enough pages and you link them correctly.

Every page has PR1 on its own right. If a page has PR0 it's giving all its PR away and not receiving any in return. If all pages on a site have PR0, then the only possible explanation is that...
a. they all link out and don't link to each other, or...
b. they're being penalized.

To be honest, I have to disagree. There would be absolutely no reason to penalize this site (and the fact that it shows up in Google searches should compound on my assumption).

All the pages are linked well with standard navigation and coded extremely well (forgive me for flossing, but I hand coded it myself). Were I to have coded it recently, I would've switched the content and the nav around, but surely you'll see no reason to disagree with me about its position! PR is about links and links only! The site is on the first page of Google results for relevant keywords, but it has 3 inbound links max... What else can you conclude from the info at hand?