My Site Has a TBPR of 5/10 ?!

Posted by Melanie Phung on Sunday, March 5, 2006 at 7:35 pm

PageRank (PR) is Google’s measure of how valuable a site is, all things being equal. It doesn’t have anything to do with relevance, it simply looks at how many links are coming into your site and who is doing the linking. (Read my previous post called Intro to Google PageRank)

The point to stress is that PageRank doesn’t determine how a page is going to rank for any given search; it’s a common misconception because the name PageRank implies something about the ranking of a page. Actually, PageRank is named after Larry Page, its inventor (with a small dose of irony, I’m sure).

So, given that PageRank measures link popularity, how is it that the Google toolbar last week indicated my blog’s homepage had a PageRank of 5?

Even better: Over the weekend, my PageRank (according to the toolbar) dropped to 3. My blog has become less popular over the course of a week? I’d believe it except my blog wasn’t at all popular to begin with.

The point I’m trying to underscore is that Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) is iffy at best. The toolbar is only updated very sporadically throughout the year, while actual PR is, we are led to assume, recalculated continually. Regardless, whether it was calculated yesterday or three months ago, it is highly improbable that www.all-about-content.com rates a 3, much less a 5. (PR values are exponential, so a value of 5 is many times more significant than a PR3.)

I think this example is pretty convincing proof that you shouldn’t put too much stock in TBPR.

The usual disclaimer: I may or may not be right about the specifics (not that my post contains all that many specifics). If you’re interested in how PageRank is calculated and/or the debate over whether PageRank as displayed on the toolbar has any meaning at all, there are more authoritative sites than mine that can provide deeper insights. You can find them by googling the term “PageRank.”