Page Rank and Back Links Are Now Getting Googled

Many people have lost that lovin' feelin' when it comes to the past few Google Page Rank updates. Google itself has decried that Page Rank is for "entertainment purposes only." It is well-known also that Page Rank is not tied to the search engine results pages (SERP's), so a PR7 website can be buried in the rankings while a PR3 page may hold the top position.

Still, though a fair number of people continue to get excited every time Google does update its Page Rank in its toolbar. Many companies still use their site's PR number as a cost basis for offering advertising upon their sites. Others see PR as a good indicator of their link-building efforts for the past 3 months (or lack of efforts).

It appears as if Google is trying to make their Page Rank updates upon a quarterly basis. The last PR update, however, they missed by 6 weeks, while this PR update they only missed their quarterly mark by 2 weeks.

Google's back link update is also something that many watch to see how well Google is responding to their linking campaigns. Since Google only lists back links with a PR4 or above, this tool has been somewhat suspect from the very beginning. There is a better tool from MarketLeap.com that measures back links across all of the major search engines.

No matter what, though, the Google Page Rank and Back Link update is sure to raise the volume of the chatter at the SEO and Webmaster message boards for the next couple of weeks.